


fake date

by LaryssaD17



Series: Dauntlessly [1]
Category: Divergent (Movies), Divergent - All Media Types, Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Detective!Eric, Drama & Romance, Eris - Freeform, Expect a lot of grammar errors, F/M, Friends as Family, Love/Hate, M/M, No beta we die like Tris and Uriah and the rest of the crew, Nurse!Tris, Romance, Romantic Comedy, Slow Burn, Tris and Eric are roommates, Wedding, frienemies to lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:09:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27135049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaryssaD17/pseuds/LaryssaD17
Summary: No one said that faking a relationship with your roommate for your brother's wedding was going to be easy anyway.
Relationships: Christina/Will (Divergent), Eric/Tris Prior, Peter Hayes/Caleb Prior
Series: Dauntlessly [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1990744
Comments: 1
Kudos: 23





	1. "old friend"

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing for this fandom and this ship. I don't really know what I'm going with this, just that I kind of saw something in the books and then in the movies about this two and that I had to try and do something that wasn't canon related 'cause, honestly, fuck canon. Also, ENGLISH IS NOT MY FIRST LANGUAGE, so please, have in mind that this work may have grammar errors everywhere. Remember that this is an AU and that can be consider a romantic comedy more than anything else. Feedback will be appreciated.

Grocery shopping wasn't an activity Tris enjoyed too much. She preferred to leave it to her roommate, but since that accident a few years ago, she prefers to go to supervise the dude like a mother oversees her children in the playground. Just for safety issues, because she hated the place and the whole process with her life.

For example, she hates to do the list, she hates to encounter known people and have awkward meetings with them, and she hates to carry the bags seven floors (especially when the elevators is broken), but the thing she hates the most, is the ride to the supermarket and the ride back home. She prefers a thousand times to carry the bags on the bus that had to go with her roommate in his car.

The reason? His entire existence.

Tris sighs, like a tired mother. She is indeed tired since she had the afternoon shift and she slept like four or five hours, but she thinks that she is too young to be a mother. She turns around to look through the car window, in a very poor attempt to ignore the loud angry music the speakers were blasting like it was even possible.

Her head was starting to hurt because of the loud music, but because it wasn't her car, she couldn't say anything to him. It was one of his rules anyway. "Driver picks the music; shotgun shuts his cakehole". And he even quoted Supernatural, like he somehow saw that show. So, that was basically why AC/DC was blasting super loudly in Eric's car and Tris wanted to die. Or why she hated grocery shopping so much.

"Can you change that face?", he asks, when they stop at a red light.

"It's the only one I have", she answers, without even looking at him.

"Okay, but you look like I'm torturing you and that will make people think badly of me".

"Well is not like the torturing part isn't true", this time the blonde turns her head to look at him and finds him rolling his eyes.

Eric also looks tired, not like her, but she is not sorry for getting him out of bed early. This is probably one of the only occasions in a very long time where their days off are the same and that is both a blessing and a curse to Tris. A blessing because they can finally have food in the fridge and a curse because she must stand him at home for twenty-four hours or more. He looks tired because he has been working hard in a case, or at least that's what he told her the other day when she confronted him for not cooking as they agreed. She knew that was a lame excuse, but the bags under his eyes and his messier hair than usual said otherwise. Yet, she doesn't feel guilty for screaming at him that day or this morning so he could get out of bed so they could go grocery shopping.

"Classic rock is not torture, is real music, you should know that", he says, moving the car a little more forward, but without hitting the yellow taxi in front of them.

"That's an opinion. Yours. Not mine", she says, looking at the window again. To be seven in the morning, the sky was dangerously gray.

"Well, what you consider music, then? Don't tell me BTS because I'll vomit", she frowns and looks at him offended.

"They aren't that bad".

"They don't even sing in English".

"They have some songs in English, and they are good. However, I don't like them so much. I prefer classical or pop in general", Eric rolls his eyes and they start moving forward because the light changed to green.

"Classical music makes me sleep, but that explains why you have Vivaldi's discs at home", this time is Tris who rolls her eyes before turning to the window again.

They stay in silence again, with just AC/DC blasting through the speakers until they arrive at the supermarket. When the car's engine stops and the music with it, Tris sighs relieved.

"Silence at last", she mutters, while she jumps out.

"You're such a drama queen", Eric says from the other side.

"I wasn't the one who started banging its head like a maniac".

"It's called living the moment".

"Whatever. Let's go. I want to end this"; the blonde woman starts walking to the supermarket and Eric follows her.

The height difference is obvious when they stop side by side to cross a little street that separates the parking from the supermarket. Just like all their other differences. Because while Eric is all dressed in black, except for his Chicago Police Department hoodie that is navy blue and wearing his combat boots from work, Tris is wearing jeans and away too wide grey sweater. Both have messy hair and zombie's faces, but Tris made sure that Eric drank his daily cup of coffee before coming because then he wouldn't be that calm.

Once they crossed the little street and had the shopping cart, they entered the supermarket to find it almost empty. Tris gets the shopping list she made a couple of days ago from her purse and then they start their hellish journey. Because that's the only way Tris can describe grocery shopping with Eric.

* * *

"Wait up, what the hell is that?"

She had been counting the minutes, even, to when he will complain about something she will put in the cart and she thanked God or whoever oversees the world, that not too much people liked to get to the supermarket at seven in the morning because the arguing he started could wake up an entire block. This was why they agreed to go together when grocery shopping was due. So, they could buy whatever they liked and not complain when things were at the fridge, or at least, complain at the supermarket where they could change it.

"They are nuggets, Eric", she answers, with a tired voice, looking at him with the hand that is holding the list on her hips.

"Of course, they are. You're such a genius, Stiff", he says sarcastically, and Tris fights the urge to roll her eyes. "I mean that why are you bringing that brand? You know it has more calories than the others", he takes the nuggets bag and looks at the table in its back.

"They are nuggets, for God's sake", she says.

Tris is glad he is making this scene where there aren't too many people because she doesn't want to get in trouble again with the manager like that time, they started an argument about if taking beer was a good or bad idea for their budget.

"Yes, but they have too many calories. That's bad for the health and they are more expansive than the ones we usually buy", Tris rolls her eyes this time. She prays for patience, a lot of it, so she doesn't punch him right there and then. (Is not like if she punches him, she will hurt him).

"We are talking about nuggets, Eric. They are all the same", he looks at her with a serious glare.

"I'm not going to lose this beautiful body of mine because you didn't want to change the nuggets", he explains.

"Are you serious? You go to the gym and have a punching bag at home, you aren't going to get fat by eating a goddamn nugget with more calories than usual".

"Okay but is still too expensive. Is over two dollars more expansive than the usual one", Tris loses it and groans in frustration before she gets the frozen bag of nuggets out of his hands, turns around, and starts walking to the frozen food section again. "Make sure they are of quality!", Tris mutters something under her breath and disappears, leaving him alone in the aisle.

Tris searches again for another bag of nuggets. One that is not so 'expensive' but that will receive Eric's approval. She wanted to hit him so hard with the bag, but they were in public and it was too early to start a fight and risk being banned from another supermarket.

When she finds one that is 'better' than the other one, she looks at the list and returns to where she left the blond tall man. She stops suddenly when she doesn't find him there. She sighs again and turns around, thinking that he is probably at the vegetable aisle looking for his 'precious' apples and pears.

Tris is turning the corner of that aisle when she stops suddenly with what she finds. On the other side, Eric is holding the red shopping cart like his life depends on it but dissimulating it with one of his many 'indifferent stances'. Tris will say that he looked very uncomfortable, almost like he was taken by surprise and he, for the first time in their years has roommates, looked unsure.

And Tris had to move a little to understand why he was all weird. Why he was so unlike the Eric she knows. It was a woman, but not any kind of woman. It was a policewoman that he knew very well to make him feel out of control. She didn't have a police uniform, but Tris could see her badge and her gun in her belt, just like Eric's uses when he is on duty. She was tall, well, at least taller than Tris and she was beautiful and smiley. Suddenly, Tris feels self-conscious about how pretty the other woman is in comparison with her. Is a bad habit Tris has, comparing herself with other women like she isn't wonderful in her way.

The short-haired blonde swallows a little and scratches her head. Maybe she should return later or maybe she could enjoy a little how Eric suffered. Because he was uncomfortable while talking to the woman, and since he dedicated himself to annoy her at every chance he has, she decides that it's funny to see him suffer until she sees the policewoman look at her and then at Eric turning a little to see her.

She blushes a little but decides to go to them since she is already busted.

"I brought the nuggets you wanted", she says, suddenly shy, while she puts the frozen bag in the cart.

"Thanks, love", she hears and for a second she thinks she heard wrong, but before she can complain, Eric surrounds her shoulders with one of his arms and when Tris looks at him, he is looking at her with wide pleading grey eyes.

Pleading for her to follow him on this. But why?

And when she looks back at the policewoman in front of them, she understands.

"Oh, you're welcome, honey", she says, smiling a little and looking at him again with wide eyes, like if they are trying to talk by telepathy.

"So, Lauren, this is Tris, my girlfriend. Tris, this is Lauren, an old friend", Tris surrounds Eric's waist with an arm of her own and smiles happily at the policewoman in front of them.

"Hi", Tris says.

Lauren looks a little surprised like she didn't expect Eric to be there at seven in the morning with 'his girlfriend'. But she recuperates rapidly, grinning at them and offering her hand for Tris to shake it.

"Hi, is a pleasure to meet you", but while they shake hands, Tris knows she is not so pleasured to meet her, not at all.

"Likewise".

"Well, we should go. Long day ahead. Lauren, will you greet old Max at the station for me?", Eric says, with a calmer expression. He gets his arm out of Tris' shoulders and grabs the cart again to move a little. The short-haired blonde moves with him.

"Yes, of course. You know we miss you there. You should pay us a visit sometime".

"I will, but I'm kind of busy these days. You know how it is", Eric gives her a smirk and while they say goodbye to each other, Tris smiles.

When they are exiting the vegetable aisle, neither turn back. Is not until they are at a safe distance that Eric lets go a relief sigh and Tris looks at him with a knowing smirk.

"So, that was an ex", she starts, enjoying the moment, of course.

"She's an old friend. And stop, it's nothing of your business", he says, in his serious/cruel tone he always uses when he is warning her to not get her nose in his things.

"Yes, old friend, of course", she says sarcastically, and he looks at her with a frown. "You will fake a relationship with your roommate in front of an 'old friend'".

"Are you jealous?", he is smirking at her now, like he does when he is annoying her, but Tris looks at him while she laughs.

"Oh, please, why will I be jealous? Is obvious she is an ex, that you wanted to show her something and that you will owe me for this".

"Why will I owe you? And I don't have anything to show her".

Tris suddenly stops and turns around him and Eric does the same just to not run her over with the cart. She leans a little in front of the cart and he stares right into her eyes.

"You're not over her, is pretty obvious, so you told her you had a girlfriend to get a reaction from her. In my opinion, it worked", her voice is so low that he almost feels intimidated, but Eric stands there, with an indifferent face and a smirk, like he is enjoying her wrong conclusions. "But tell me, did she told you something that made you feel the need to fake a girlfriend? I guess she probably told you that she was in a relationship again. And to show her that you were over the thing you two had and all that, you used me. And because of that, you are lucky, I could have blown your cover and it would have been funny to see you so embarrassed. But I didn't, so basically you owe me now".

Eric looks at her for a few seconds, like when they are having a staring contest to see who is going to clean the bathroom. But this time, he has a smirk on his face and after a while, he leans on using the cart to put his elbows until his head is low enough to be aligned with Tris' face.

He smirks, even more, when he sees her back off a little at his closeness. When he speaks, his voice is low and makes her feel chills all over her body, like electricity.

"You think you are smart, right? Well, let me tell you that you are wrong. Lauren is an old friend like I told you and the only reason you were my fake girlfriend for five minutes was that she saw us and thought we were together. I decide to go with the lie to see if she stopped flirting and leave me alone. It worked. Now, I don't owe anything to you. Aren't you the selfless nurse that helps everyone when she can? Well, think this as one of your selfless acts", and just like that, he backs off and moves the cart past her.

Tris needs a few seconds to collect herself before following him to the cashier. She thinks he lies. He must be lying, even if he sounded convincing, it had to be a lie. She knows how to read people; she knows a liar when she sees one (thanks to Christina). But she can stop thinking neither about the fact that having him so close made her stomach volt and revolt.

She scratches her short blonde hair and then sighs.

This man is going to be the death of her.


	2. invitation

It's being a long day: that's all Tris can think of while she steps into her building. Her feet hurt because she has been walking and running from one place to another and she feels like she needs a bath and then a very long sleep. But especially a bath since she just came out of the hospital and she feels like she is leaving germs all around the place.

She avoids their PO box thinking that she doesn't want to put germs on it, so she continues her way to the elevator. After she goes inside, she pushes her floor button and waits for the metal box to close. She sighs tired, thinking about her bed and maybe some food. Yeah, maybe some food will be okay before going to sleep.

Tris feels that the elevator takes forever but eventually arrives at her floor and she is relieved to see her door from there. She walks to it while she searches for her keys in her bag and when she arrives, she opens the door.

"Finally," she says to herself.

The first thing she gets off is her shoes, then her bag, and then she closes her door before throwing her keys at the coffee table in the living room and getting her grey sweater off.

"I'm home!", she yells, like she has the bad habit to do.

No one responds like it usually happens, but this time Tris sighs in relief because the absence of black combat boots at the door and her annoying roommate, are a signal that he hasn't arrived yet.

So, she takes advantage of the situation and runs to her room to get some clothes and take her time to bathe.

* * *

When Tris gets out of the bathroom, she feels much better. She feels less tired, and her feet don't hurt so much, but most importantly, she doesn't feel like she is spreading germs everywhere. Is not like she will care if they end up in Eric's stuff, but as a precaution, she always takes after getting out of the hospital she worked at.

Once she is dressed in pajama pants and a tank top that let her collarbone tattoo visible, she puts a bandana around her head, so the front hair wouldn't disturb her, and takes her sleepers, she exits the apartment to go for the mail.

She opened with a key and took the letters. She flashed across them until she found one that caught her attention. It was from her brother and she suddenly got worried because he never writes to her, at least not by the letter.

"Hi, Tris", she hears and when she turns around, she finds Al, one of her neighbors. She smiles at him before she closes the PO box with the key.

"Hi, Al. How are you?", she asks, more for politeness than anything else.

Don't get Tris wrong, she thinks Al is a nice person, but he has tried to flirt with her, and he hasn't caught yet that she isn't interested in him or a relationship.

"Good. Although, work has been a little hell today", he explains and while they walk to the elevator, Tris remembers that he works as a construction worker, or at least that's what his clothes say for him.

"Tell me about it", the blonde gives him a sarcastic chuckle. "Mine was long too. Too many patients", she says, and he nods.

"I still don't get how you can deal with so many people in a day" if she is honest with herself, Tris doesn't know either. Sometimes she thinks that it's because she is tired of seeing Eric's face every day and that's why it excites her to see new faces and patients because the emergency room was an interesting place if you paid attention.

"It comes with the job", she answers, and the rest of the conversation is about weird stuff Al likes and that Tris only listens for courtesy, like she sometimes does with her patients.

When they arrive at their floor, they get off and Tris is fast to get to her apartment. She is opening after saying goodbye to all when she hears her name again. She turns to him again.

"I was wondering", he starts and suddenly the big muscled man in front of her gets shy and a little nervous. Tris thinks it will be adorable if she was interested in him, but she isn't. "If you gave thought to that thing, I told you before", he ends, and Tris looks at him confused for a few seconds until she remembers.

"Oh", it's her only response for a moment. Because she totally forgot about him asking her out. "I'm sorry Al, I totally forget about it. I've been busy these past days, too much night shifts and…"

"Okay, I understand", he says, and Tris feels a little bit bad. But it was the truth. She has been busy and tired all these days and when she finally gets home, she must fight the child in an adult form she has for a roommate. "We can leave it for later if you want of course. For when you have time", he looks. The one where he shows how much hope he is at her accepting to have dinner or hang out with him.

She hates when people give her that look. She thinks is okay in animals, but not in people, because she can't say no, because she will feel guilty later if she says no. But then something heavy will be at her heart because she said yes, and she will not be happy doing whatever she said yes to. She hates that feeling and she hates herself for being that idiot. For being so selfless.

Tris suddenly remembers that time Eric discovered that she couldn't say no to people. They stopped at a restaurant to eat after they went to the supermarket and she insisted to pay the waitress tip if he wasn't going to. He stared at her with confusion, until she explains to him that it was the thing right thing to do. They fought the car later, about morals and that's when she discovered that Eric was a cop but not a very merciful one. That he was kind of cruel in the way he thought and a little selfish in some things, but she knew he had his own reasons. Tris didn't agree with him on many things, but they needed each other to pay rent. Maybe that's why neither of them has kicked the other out.

So, he sometimes gets that in her face, because she can say no to people, nor be a little selfish from time to time, but he doesn't know the whole story, just like she doesn't know why he is the contrary.

"Yeah, that sounds good. I will tell you when I'm free", she says to Al and she can see how his face shifts into a hopeful smile. She grins at him, but not that shiny before they say goodbye to each other and enter their respective places.

When Tris closes the door, she exhales shakily, like she does when she just lied to a patient.

* * *

Tris shakes her head rapidly and tries to get Al and her false promise out of the head. Looking at her brother's letter in her hand helps her to put that issue at the back of her hand.

She moves with her sleepers to the living room until she leaves her keys at the coffee table and takes a sit on the couch. She almost yelps when the couch goes a little too under for her liking. She then realizes she is at Eric's side of the couch, which is always down because he is too big for it and because he is always leaning back to get "comfortable" for when he sees his Chicago Bulls or Cubs play or whatever team that comes from Chicago.

Tris stands up again, until she is at the other side of the couch, her side, and once she is sat and comfy with her legs under herself and the arm of the couch is her table, she leaves the rest of the letter in the coffee table to open the one she is interested in.

She feels her stomach volt a little, since Caleb usually texts her or calls her when he wants to tell her something, but is not a surprise at all that he mail her like they were in the '80s. He liked to do weird things like the big nerd he is.

Tris opens the envelope and finds another envelope that has her name on it. It's the color of the honey and the writing is too beautiful that it occurs to her than it wasn't written by Caleb nor Peter, since their handwriting was as messy and unreadable as hieroglyphics.

She carefully opens the envelope, scared that she will break it since it was too beautiful to be broken. She finds a white hard paper in it and then she understands. Her heart starts skipping beats while she gets the card out of the envelope.

Her eyes open wide and her mouth starts to hang when she read the entire thing. It's an invitation. A wedding invitation. To Caleb and Peter's wedding.

"Holy Mother of…", she stops herself before she can say more, imagines the face her father will put if he saw her blaspheming in that way. She puts a hand over her mouth and her eyes start to water while she reads the thing. She is happy, she is and the grin behind her hand says it all.

Her older brother is finally marrying. After so long with Peter, they are going to finally take that step. And Tris couldn't be happier. She didn't like Peter at first, because he was very stupid and a total jerk, but after knowing him better and seeing why Caleb loves him so much, she understood that they were meant to be. And it took them ages to realize it but is better late than never.

She wipes away a tear that escapes her eye and sniffs a little while she observes the wedding invitation. She is so happy that she started crying. She chuckles about it and decides that she needs to call them to tell them that she received the invitation and that she is going for sure.

But before she can do that, she sees another thing inside the envelope. She gets it out and finds a little card with Caleb's handwriting.

"Hope you're doing good, little sis. Please, call me as soon as you see this. No excuses. With love, C and P".

She sniffs again and after leaving the wedding invitation on the coffee table she runs to her room to get her phone. She returns to the living room searching for Caleb's number in her contacts and she is already calling when she sits again on the couch.

Tris is so excited that she forgot to sit back at her side of the couch. She waits impatiently until she hears another hello on the other side of the phone.

"I received your invitation! Congrats guys!", she says with too much excitement, but she doesn't care.

She hears Caleb's chuckle at the other side, and she grins while she wipes another tear from her face.

"God, stop it. You're going to make me cry too", he says, and she chuckles. "You and our parents' letters were the first ones we send, so you are practically the first that knows we are going to marry".

"That makes it more special. God, I have been waiting for this moment for ages. I have been shipping you both since you met Peter at that group project I had to do with him", she confesses, and it feels good to finally say it.

Caleb laughs at the other side and she is transported back to their childhood, to when they played hide and seek inside their house because outside was raining and Caleb couldn't hold his laugh, so Tris always found him fast enough. Those were good times, times she missed.

"It's good to hear that you are more excited than me for my own wedding", he says, and she can imagine him smiling at the other side. "But on a serious topic, Peter and I could use some help with it. It's too much planning, and now that you know is easier".

"You mean like you were planning it, all this time without telling anyone?!"

"We want it to be a surprise", Tris gasps, faking offense, but Caleb chuckles again.

"Well, it was a surprise, even though everyone who sees you too together knows that you two are meant to be", Tris can imagine him blushing right now, just like he always did when she mentioned his relationship with Peter.

"Thanks, sis. For supporting us in this", the short-haired blonde, grinds to herself.

"It's always a pleasure. Now, I will be glad to help you with the planning, but you must keep in mind that I'm not very good at the decoration and all that. You just need to see my apartment to know that", Tris looks around, like if she is talking to him in person and is about to point him to the living room.

"Well, you're not the only one that lives there. So, it's not only your fault. It's your boyfriend's too", he says, and Tris suddenly freezes in her spot.

She was about to ask him what boyfriend when she remembers the conversation, they had a few months back, where Tris kind of lied to him about having a boyfriend and living with him. It wasn't her intention to lied to him, but he got very instant and she was 'forced' to tell him what he wanted to hear: that Tris got over her ex and was now living with her boyfriend and having a nice happy relationship with him. It was all bullshit, but Caleb didn't need to know about that.

"Well, yes, of course. But he blames me most of the time", she rolls her eyes. Remembering that time she wanted to put plants in the balcony and the living room, so the places wouldn't seem so sad and lonely, but Eric started an argument with her because plants were in the way and he couldn't use his punching bag in the balcony with the "stupid plants all around the place".

"I bet he has worse style than you".

"In my opinion, he has a better taste at it than me", Tris says that with Eric's room in her mind. His room is cleaner and organized than hers. And had a better combination of colors than hers. He always makes fun of her about it, just like he does with almost everything else.

"Now that we talk about him, mom and dad asked me about you, and he and I share their idea that you should bring him to my wedding", Tris swallows.

Bring her non-existence boyfriend to Caleb's wedding? She is so fucked uppppppppppp.

"Am…", she starts, but right before she can even think of an excuse to say to her brother, the apartment door opens, and a tired with an annoyed face Eric enters the apartment and an idea suddenly occurs to her. After all, he owns her one.

"Actually, I think it will be a good idea", she says at her phone, standing up from the couch.

The blonde stops close to him, but not close enough, where she can see Eric getting his combat black boots off. The wheels in her head are turning and turning and a smile is almost appearing on her face.

"It is?", Caleb sounds surprised, something that makes Tris roll her eyes. "I thought you will say no since you know. You don't like to talk about these things", it was true. She didn't like to talk about these things, not even with her family, but it wouldn't be real, so she will talk about it.

"You offend me, but yes, I will like to present him to all of you", she says, and Eric is oblivious that she is talking about him at all.

"Well, cool!", he says, and Tris knows he is excited to meet him. Or at least, who she thinks is her boyfriend. "What's his name again?"

"Eric", she pronounces without doubting a second. The tall blond man who was getting his jacket off to hang it next to Tris jacket, look at her with a confused face. She gave him a grin and now he looks confused. "His name is Eric".

"You told me he was a cop or something, right?"

"Detective actually, but close enough. He was promoted recently. Break a record because he is the youngest one of the Chicago Police Department in ages", Eric looks at her with caution, like he is trying to understand. He wants to know why she is using that tone like she is proud like she cares.

"Wow, that sounds pretty impressive. I hope you both can make it to the wedding, really".

"We will. Am, I must go now, because he just arrived, and I haven't cook. Give my hellos to Peter, congrats again and call me if you need something", she says looking at his feet. Eric is still watching her from the entrance, but he crossed his arms and is deadly silent, suddenly. Something that makes her kind of nervous if she is honest.

"Yes, of course. Give Eric my hellos too. Take care and I will definitely call you for the wedding", Tris smiles and after a goodbye, she hangs up the call and lets out a very heavy sigh before scratching her face a little.

Silence surrounds the living room for what looks to be forever until Tris looks at Eric.

"I need you to pay me that favor you owe me".

"Do I?", he asks, and he looks too calm to be Eric. And Tris has been living with him enough to know that Eric's silence is never a good thing.

"Yeah, for Lauren's thing, remember?"

His dermals rise with his right brown and he smirks until his face distorts into a grin and a laugh erupts from him. A very low and sarcastic laugh.

Before Tris can comprehend what's happening, Eric is in front of her, too close for her liking, looking at her dead in the eyes. She can feel his warmth and his breath over her face, so, she swallows and tries to stand her ground. He is bigger, smells (somehow) good, but is not the first time he roughly invades her personal space.

"I don't owe anything to anyone", he whispers, so slow, so low that Tris swears she barely heard it. "Less to you, Stiff".

"Yes, you do, Eric", she says, with braveness rushing to all her human beings. "I saved you back then in the supermarket from an evil ex-girlfriend, and now I need the favor back".

"Don't tell me you just lie to your brother about your pathetic love life", he says, rather roughly, but still low enough to make her body tremble a little.

"Yes, I did, and you are going to help me".

"Hell no, I'm not", he says a little higher, but without yelling. He lets her arms go and he steps back a little.

He runs a hand through his blond hair that is longer up, and Tris can see the tattoos on his arms. She has never asked about them, just like he never asked about hers. She let out a breath once she is far from his manly smell.

"You know what? I'm too tired for your bullshit, I'm out of here", he says, and before Tris can say anything, Eric has his bag from the floor and is walking to his room.

Tris jumps a little when she hears the slam of his door and after sighing loudly, she rubs her eyes.

The sound of her stomach groaning is what makes her decide that she should eat something. She could deal with Eric and the non-existence boyfriend later.


	3. rules

Tris is looking at Caleb and Peter's wedding invitation while she is sat down in her bed. The thing says that the wedding will be celebrated in a few months and that's enough time to find a fake boyfriend who can respond to Eric and is the youngest detective in CPD. She knows she can find it, but she doesn't know where. Maybe she can get an actor or something?

"What was I thinking?", she asks herself out loud, while she looks at the invitation. "I'm so dumb. Eric is not that easy to convince", the many arguments and begs she had to do in their three years of living together was enough proof of it. "It has never been".

But he is the only choice she has. From all the people she could think of, it had to be him.

"Uriah probably will say yes, but he is out. Zeke is way out of this if I want to keep my head glued to my body. Christina will never let Will pose as my fake boyfriend and the list is that short, Jesus", she gets out of her bed and starts walking around like she does when she is nervous. "Why did I lie in the first place?"

She sighs exhausted again. Because she hated listening to her older brother saying that she needed to move on from ex-boyfriend. He believed the lie and for a moment Tris thought that he forgot about it but turns out that he didn't.

And now she is fucked up.

"Maybe Al can take the job? No, hell no", Tris shakes her head to take the idea out of her head. She doesn't want him to involve in this and neither she wants him to get high hopes for her.

Eric is the only one who can be her fake boyfriend because she did it based on him. She regrets it, but it was a rushed decision and now she is living the consequences. Lesson learned to the future: don't use your roommate as a fake boyfriend never in your life.

She doesn't have options. There is no one else that can be Eric but himself, so she needs to convince him to help her. Because he owes her, but that thing with his 'old friend' is not a strong topic to make him do this, she needs a better way to it. She needs to find away.

"Think, Tris, think", she says to herself, starting to walk from one way to the other again.

And she walks and walks and walks until she suddenly stops. An idea pops in her head, is not so good, but could do the work. Or at least she hopes.

She exits her room as fast as a bullet and enters Eric's without knocking. She finds him in his desk, surrounded by folders and his computer, with a mug of coffee, an empty plate, and an annoying face now that she entered like it's her place.

"You don't know how to knock?", he asks, clearly irritated. She doesn't blame him. She hates it when he does the same, but she doesn't care right now.

"Can we make a deal?", she says, and he rolls his eyes, apparently knowing what she is talking about.

A few minutes ago, they ate dinner in very uncomfortable silence. He knew her well, apparently, to know that every single time she looked at him, she was thinking about the boyfriend thing. He got tired of it and ended leaving to his room with his food. He always did that when she annoyed him or when he had a hard case to solve, and Tris usually smiled triumphally because she annoyed the hell out of him after a while, but today was different.

"I told you already…"

"I know what you told me, Eric", she interrupts him, and he looks at her with a death glare, just like he does because he hates to be interrupted. "But I don't care. I came here to make a deal. It will get me what I want, and it will be beneficial to you too".

He turns around in this chair until he is in front of her and crosses his arms while he moves his head a little to the right like he does when he is interested in something. His arms tattoos are visible again, just like the ones he has in his neck, that are visible thanks to the low-neck Chicago Bulls shirt he has on as a pajama.

"Enlighten me", his voice is sarcastic, but Tris doesn't care.

"The deal is this one: you will pretend to be my fake boyfriend at my brother's wedding and in exchange, I will do anything you want for a month", her voice was confident and her chin was high like she knew for sure that she was going to succeed.

They stay in silence for what feels like an eternity, looking at each other straight in the eyes, until Eric's laugh irrupts in the silence. Tris puts a hand on her hip and runs her other hand through her hair while the blond man in front of her laughs like she just said the best joke ever.

"I'm serious, Eric", she says, looking annoyed.

"Oh, you were? I thought that you were just saying shit around like you are a child or something", Tris rolls her eyes. "I didn't know we were still kids that play around about lying to their families and all that shit".

Tris swallows and looks at him with her jaw clenched. He is looking at her with a smirk and she knows Eric is enjoying every single moment of this situation. Tris knows he likes to get difficult. But she is not the normal kind of person, she doesn't kneel before people, she can't be controlled like the others. Tris is on the verge of losing it. So, she lets out a part of her that she doesn't like to use, to mention.

"Look, you can mock me everything you want, but you owe me one and you know I was right about Lauren back at the supermarket. You were trying to show her that you were over her. It will be a shame if I contacted Lauren to tell her that her ex used his roommate has a fake girlfriend to save his ass. Because he can stan her get over him already".

Tris' voice was poison and sounded like everything except herself. She knew it was very unlike her, but she also knew that it was the only thing that could work with him once her Plan A failed. And it worked, at least a little, because, in a flash, Eric was up from his chair and just a few steps from her with a tense body, directing her a death glare.

"You wouldn't dare, Stiff", he whispers, and they are so close Tris can smell the soap he uses to bathe or feel his breath on her face. Their height difference is kind of uncomfortable, but that's the last thing in their minds.

"Try me", she says in the same tone as him.

They exchange death glares for a few seconds in silence, like they are doing another staring contest to see who is going to wash the dishes again. Neither of them blinks an eye and they are so tense that a knife could cut it.

That is until Tris takes a step back and turns around.

"Where are you going?", Eric questions and Tris wanted to smile because he sounded worried.

"Make some calls to find your old friend", she answers and before she can cross his door, she feels a hand catching her elbow. In less than a second, Tris is turned around and Eric's cold eyes are at her again.

"Don't", he says, and Tris can feel the tension, the fear.

He fears her doing it. He fears that she will tell the truth to his 'old friend'. Eric knew to not overestimate Tris, but he forgets about it for a second. But here was reminding him that he shouldn’t fuck with her like this. That she wasn't a mere selfless nurse with the most stupid nickname ever.

"I'm an adult and I can do whatever I want. You should know that since you're a policeman", she explains, with the calmer voice she can and with the most unworried face ever.

And when he looks away and swallows hard Tris wonders what could happen between those two to make him surrender himself at her like that. But she wasn't going to ask, not now of course.

"Okay", Eric lets go of her. But then points at her with his index finger, like a parent giving important instructions. "But we will stick to the deal".

"Hell no. You refuse it once; you can't go to it again".

"Then I will not help you".

"Then I will find Lauren and tell her you're such a crybaby", she gives him a pleased smile and turns around to go again, but Eric catches her arm again.

And this time he pushes her into the hallway until her back is pressed against the wall and he is right in front of her, blocking her from going anywhere. Tris' heart starts beating fast suddenly and all the braveness she had, disappeared. She came so tensely and stiff that she started to tremble.

"Let's make a new deal, okay?", he starts, with a husky voice she has only heard when he is super angry.

She had heard it once, one time he came from a difficult case and she started yelling at him for not cleaning the dishes when he was supposed to. That night he look at her with such anger and coldness that she didn't recognize her roommate, she only saw another person. Tris was scared that night, but this time not so much.

He puts his left hand at the wall, close to her head and he leaves a little space between their bodies. She tries to concentrate on his grey cold eyes, in him, not on his smell or how nervous she suddenly feels.

"Shoot", she says, in the most confident voice she can.

"I will be your fake boyfriend for your brother's stupid wedding and in exchange, you will keep that loud mouth of yours closed", he explains, and when he mentions mouth, his grey irises land for a couple of seconds in her lips.

Tris sees the action and gets her composure again. Or at least what she can reunite. She crosses her arms in front of herself and rises her chin.

"First of all, is not a stupid wedding and second, we need some rules".

"Of course".

"Deal", she gets her right hand out and offers it to him. Eric looks at it for a second, then at the blonde in front of him, and then at the hand again.

"I hope I'll not regret this, Stiff", he says, shaking her hand. Then, Tris smiles at him.

"A pleasure doing business with you, now, do you have paper and pencil for our rules?", Eric rolls his eyes and gives a few steps back.

"You're going to do a contract or something?"

"Yes, and you agreed, so you can't go back now", she says pointing at him with her index as he did once. He gives her a sarcastic smile before turning around to his room to look for paper and pencil. "And stop calling me Stiff. That nickname is stupid".

Tris doesn't receive an answer until Eric is back in the hallway with a notebook and a pen. It's from those notepads he uses to take notes for his cases. Tris almost rolls her eyes when he closes the door of his room with a naughty smirk on his face.

"That, Stiff, isn't going to happen anytime soon", Eric says and Tris scoffs before uncrossing her arms and turning around to the living room.

* * *

Tris sat on her side of the couch and Eric on his. He pulled the coffee table closer and they put the notepad between them on the table. They stare at it in silence for a few minutes, like they were processing everything that had happened a few minutes earlier.

Tris steals a glance at Eric and finds him staring intensively at the notepad. He is leaned a little forward, with his elbows in his thighs and his hands almost intertwined in the air. He is thinking, she knows that, but his silence gets a little on her nerves.

In the past years, Tris learned that loud, cursing, angry Eric was better than quiet, still Eric.

"If you are worried about me telling Lauren about you not getting over her, I'm not. I made a deal with you and deals are promises and a promise is unbreakable", she says, out loud, still looking at the blond beside her.

He turns his head and her blue big eyes, encounter his grey ones.

"Did you just quote Wonder Woman on me?", he scoffs, and Tris moves her head a little to the right.

"Maybe".

"I'm not worried, I was just thinking".

"Big bad Eric thinks?", he raises his right brow, where his dermals rest.

"Very funny, Stiff", he replies sarcastically. Tris lets out a small chuckle and she can swear that he smirked. "Let's get this over with 'cause I have things to do, contrary to other people", he gives her a look while he takes the notepad and opens it.

Tris rolls her eyes and watches him writing something on the notepad. His handwriting, as she has observed before, is messy and thin. It's readable, but for a second it looked like a scrawl. He puts the notepad and the pen back at the coffee table and Tris reads what he writes.

_Faking Shit Rules:_




"Seriously?", the blonde looks at Eric and he lifts his shoulders as someone who hasn't idea of what is happening. Tris sighs, before taking the pen and starts writing in number one. Her handwriting is rounder and more readable than his, but still a mess because of how fast she writes.

When she finishes, she passes the pen to him, and Eric sees the notepad.

  1. _No touching or kissing unless is strictly necessary._



"That's so Stiff from you", he says with a smirk and she rolls her eyes.

"Write your rule, c'mon".

Eric appears to think about it before writing. Tris watches him but doesn't say anything.

She is thinking back on the day he started calling her Stiff. It was a silly nickname, she knows, and it really was like an insult than anything else, but it came because he touched her suddenly to take a cup from the sink, their hands brushed, and she went all stiffen. Since then, he calls her Stiff and mocks her every time someone touches her suddenly. He even does it on purpose just to annoy her.

The click of the pen against the table makes her return to reality and to see that Eric finished writing his rule.

  1. _No telling absolutely anyone about this._



"What are you scared of?"

"It will sound more real if no one knows", Tris thinks about it.

"I can't even tell Christina?"

"Especially not to that annoying woman you call best friend", he says and Tris scoffs.

She forgot for a second there that Christina and Eric hated each other. Well, not maybe as she hates him, but close enough. They had a bad start, like very bad and since then Christina avoids Tris' apartment when he is there, and Eric annoys her when she is talking to her through the phone.

"You're just jealous you don't have an amazing best friend as her", this time is Eric who scoffs annoyingly.

"I rather die".

"Make sure you leave the rent paid for the rest of my life, and then you can die".

"Of course, that's the only reason why I'm here", he says sarcastically, and she smirks.

The reality was that he came first in the apartment and that the one who needed the other to pay rent was him, since the thing is at his name, but if she was honest, the apartment was more hers than his. It had Tris all over the place and just some things said, Eric. Like the balcony with the punching bag, for example.

Tris takes the pen and thinks for a few seconds before writing. When she finishes, she passes the pen to Eric again and he reads the rule.

  1. _We are going to be totally honest with each other._



"I'm not honest enough when I tell you that your clothes are horrible?", Tris rolls her eyes.

"Yes, you are, but I mean like if you feel uncomfortable or think that someone else discovered it".

"It's not like we are faking this for our whole lives. Is just for a day".

"Well, my brother asked my help to plan the wedding so I probably will need you to fake also when needed, not just at the wedding", she explains, and Eric looks at her with narrow eyes.

"This wasn't in the deal", he says.

"Well, it is now", and without further warning, Tris takes the pen from Eric's hand and writes in the number four.

  1. _We will be available to fake at any time and in any situation._



"That's enough for you?"

Eric doesn't say anything, he simply takes the pen from her hand just as roughly as she took it from him first. He decides to write, and Tris simply observes until he finishes.

  1. _No improvisation._



"Are you aware this is about improvisation, right?", she asks, and he rolls his eyes.

"What I mean is that you aren't going to make rushed decisions like you use to do. We are going to consult everything related to faking".

"Then why you don't express it clearly", she takes the blue pen from him again, scratches number five, and writes it again.

  1. _~~No improvisation~~. Consult everything related to faking. _



"Now it makes sense", Eric simply leans back at the couch, but contrary as he usually does when he sees a game, he doesn't put his feet over the coffee table.

Tris stares at the notepad while she hits her chin gently with the pen, thinking. Eric puts his right elbow in the couch's arm and yawns a little before stretching his other hand over the back of the couch.

"Tonight, Stiff", he says and before turning to look at him, since Tris is leaning forward, she rolls her eyes.

"I can't think of anything else", she says, and Eric moves a little to look at the list.

_Faking Shit Rules:_

  1. _No touching or kissing unless is strictly necessary._
  2. _No telling absolutely anyone about this._
  3. _We are going to be totally honest with each other._
  4. _We will be available to fake at any time and in any situation._
  5. _~~No improvisation.~~ Consult everything related to faking. _



"I think it looks good for now", Eric says, with an indifferent move of his shoulders.

"Okay. Before we sing this, let's prepare the background first".

"The what?", Tris rolls her eyes and turns to him almost completely.

"The background. The where we met, how much we have been together, etc", Eric leans back on the couch again, with a tired sigh.

After a few minutes of discussing the story of how they fake-meet and became a fake couple they finally signed the 'contract' and were free to go.

Tris signed first under the last rule and then passed the pen to him. Eric signed beside her, on the other side of the paper.

"You can't go back now", she says, looking at him.

"The same goes to you, Stiff".

"Aw, please, stop it", he smirks evilly.

"Not gonna happen, love".

Tris ignores the affectionate nickname (that doesn't have anything of affectionate) and takes the notepad to rip the sheet, while Eric stands up and returns the coffee table to its place with his knee.

Tris returns the notepad to him and she stands too before saying:

"I'm going to stick it to the fridge, so you don't forget about it", she warns and Eric mutters something she doesn't hear while he holds the pen and the notepad and turns around to return to his room.

While Tris is sticking the yellow sheet at the fridge with a magnet in form of a band-aid from the hospital she works at, she hears a door close.

She lets go air she didn't know she was holding and while she reads the rules for the last time, she surprises herself by saying the same thing Eric said a while ago.

"I hope I'll not regret this".


	4. fake

A few mornings later, Tris wakes up feeling like trash. She had a difficult shift and slept like four or five hours, she really lost count. She only knows that she wakes up because of some noises in the hallway and she couldn't sleep anymore.

When she gets out of her room, her short hair is pointing in every direction possible, her head hurts a little and her eyes are more close than open. She looks like a total zombie but is not like she cares.

She uses the bathroom, tries to not look like a zombie at all (fails miserably at it, of course), washes her teeth, and then goes to the kitchen to get some breakfast. She is on her way there when she is distracted by something, or more like someone.

Thanks to the open balcony door, she sees Eric from the living room. He is throwing punches at the punching bag hanging from the balcony's ceiling, while he listens with his earphones to what she think is Metallica, (it's so loud that she can hear it from there and she is not very sure if it's actually Metallica). But the thing that made her stop so suddenly in the living room was the fact that Eric was shirtless.

Is not the first time she sees him shirtless; he usually walks around the place without a shirt in the summer or when he recently wake up, but he usually stays with his shirt on while doing exercise.

Tris thinks that is because is kind of a new thing or maybe because she is too sleepy yet, but she kinds of stays watching more than she should. Eric is giving her his back so she can see all his back muscles but also how his arms move every single time he punches the bag. And, how his hair is messier than usual.

Before Tris can turn around and save herself some embarrassment, Eric stops kind of out of breath and turns around. Their eyes meet for a few seconds and Tris blushes a little before turning around to go to the kitchen. She doesn't have to see him either, to know that he has a knowing smirk on his face now and that he is going to mock her about what just happened.

Tris hides in the kitchen, trying not to blush, and starts searching for something to make herself some breakfast because she has work at seven. She was so busy making herself a sandwich that when she turned around to take some coffee she almost collided with Eric. When she looks at him, he has a smirk, he is still shirtless, and his earphones are hanging from his neck.

"Morning", he simply says, and Tris looks to her right, trying to avoid his toned chest or him in general.

"Morning", she repeats, and moves to the right to pass him, but Eric does the same at the same time.

The blonde holds her breath like she is holding herself from punching him. She can't lose control because then he will be satisfied and that is not what she wants. So, she prays for patience and moves to the left, but he does the same. She swallows before looking at him in the eyes.

Eric is still smirking at her like this the funniest shit ever.

"I'm trying to get coffee", she explains.

"Are you?"

"Yes, I am".

"Tell me something first", he starts, and she knows where this is going. He takes a step forward, she one back. He takes another step forward and she another one back, until he is super close to her and her lower back hits the edge of the sink.

Eric puts his hands on both sides of her and Tris tries not to stiff when he leans down a little to be at her level since she is smaller than him.

"Did you like what you saw?", she looks at him dead in the eyes. Her heart was beating too fast for her liking and she was hugging her favorite mug for dear life.

"You mean you all sweaty punching a stupid bag while listening to angry music?", he chuckles, and she frowns a little. "You wish I like you that way", and she sounds so sure of herself, that even Tris believes her words. But he doesn't and she knows it.

"Well, you should like me in that way, since, you know, I'm your fake boyfriend now".

"Fake", she repeats. "Not real. It will never be real because I don't like self-absorbed assess like you".

"Awwww, now you are angry?", he says, and he laughs a little. Tris wants to kick him in the balls so hard. "Actually, you remind me of a kitten all this. That should be your fake pet name, don't you think?"

"Whatever, I'm not going to lose my time with you. I have work at seven", she says and pushes him away, and this time, he lets her go, laughing.

Tris serves herself some coffee with trembling hands and gets her sandwich to eat it in the living room. When she sees him pass to the hallway and hears the bathroom door closing, she lets out a heavy sigh and rubs her face.

"Patience, Tris, patience".

* * *

Her watch says that is around midday when she receives a text from Christina. Tris was sat down in the cafeteria eating her lunch alone at a table when she hears her phone. She puts down her burger and sees the message, still chewing.

_I just talked with the girls and I think we need a girls' night out tonight._

Tris barely remembers the last time she went out, even less the last time she went out with her friends. She stops to think about it. She has the night shift tomorrow, so she could go out today with the girls. The problem though was that she doesn't have anything to dress for the occasion (one of the reasons why she doesn't go out that much besides not having time at all) so, she hesitates before typing her best friend back.

_What time?_

Tris leaves the phone on the table beside her food and eats a fry before hearing the phone ring again.

_Eight sounds good? Bro if you have a shift tomorrow, you don't have to go._

The blonde smiles at the bro thing. Christina has always called everyone she trusts bro, even if it's a girl. In the beginning, it was weird, but with time Tris got used to it and to Christina's self in general.

_I have the night shift tomorrow, so it's okay. I wanna hang out with you guys. It has been forever since we haven't seen each other._

And it was true. Between Tris' shifts and Christina's cases, they have seen barely. If she doesn't mention Shauna's pregnancy or Lynn's tattoo parlor.

_Okay, but don't blame me if you get a hangover and do something stupid like last time._

Tris opened her eyes wide when she remembers last time. It was a crazy night and Tris lose count of the shots. Let's just said that she woke up in Zeke and Shauna's bathtub with the worst headache in history, hugging the couple's cat.

_We don't talk about that._

_Okay then. I'll see you tonight at Dauntless. And please, for once, wear something feminine._

Tris rolls her eyes even if she has a smile on her face. That's Christina's way to tell her that she can't wear one of her baggy shirts and 80's jeans.

_No promises._

_C'mon, Tris. How are you going to get a boyfriend with clothes like that?_

Tris was about to text back that she didn't want nor needed a boyfriend when she suddenly remembered that she has a fake one. A guilty feeling rushes through her entire being because she must lie to Christina and all her friends tonight.

Her friends were her family, so lying to them felt worse than lying to her brother. But after a few seconds, she decided not to torture herself anymore with that topic and reply.

_I don't need a boyfriend anyway. But okay, I will try to wear something pretty._

_Okay. I got to go before my client does something stupid. Take care. See you tonight and I love you._

_I love you too and good luck._

_Very appreciated._

Tris leaves her phone beside her food again with a smile on her face.

She sighs before eating another fry and convinces herself that going out with her friends will make her feel better, that is what she needs to get the guilt out.


	5. wear this

When Tris arrives home, she is thinking about what she is going to wear to the girls' night out. She couldn't stop at a store to buy something new because she hated spreading germs everywhere, so she decided that she could figure something out with the things she had at home.

She is getting off her shoes and hanging her jacket when she realizes that Eric's favorite black leather jacket was still hanging from the wall. She frowns confused because she didn't expect him early. Usually, he got out at six and came much later than that. So, when she steps into the living room and finds him sitting on his side of the couch with his laptop in his lap and a few folders of something on her side of the couch, she looks at him with confusion.

"Aren't you supposed to be working?", she asks, but Eric doesn't even look at her, since he is too busy typing in his laptop while his feet are over the coffee table, just like she hates.

"I'm working", he answers, and she moves her head to the left. He rolls his eyes before looking up at her.

"I have the night shift tonight", Eric explains, and Tris nods her head, understanding.

She, then, goes directly to her room to look for fresh clothes to take a bath.

* * *

Tris sighs because her clothes are all grey or black or navy blue or white. The only 'happy' color is the sky-blue of her nurse uniform and nothing more. She supposes that she is always criticizing Eric's black and grey clothes, but she is not that far anyway.

Most of her clothes are shirts two times her real size (Tris didn't like tight things nor showing too much skin), her jeans are baggy too and her shoes are snickers or flats. She is a disaster at clothing, but in her defense, she didn't have a best friend like Christina before to tell her with all honesty that her clothing style was horrendous.

She stares at her closet for what it feels like an eternity. Her dresses are too plain and long, so they were discarded. She could try and make out an outfit of jeans and a shirt, but Christina will make her return home to change like one time.

She sighs frustrated before rubbing her face. Why being a girl was so difficult for Tris?

The blonde hears footsteps and when she looks at the hallway, Eric is passing by with his bag in one hand and his hair all wet and messy from a shower. He disappears in a second without looking insider her room. Tris tries not to remember the shit that happened that morning and asked herself why she was thinking about that in the first place.

Tris shakes her head and after returning to stare at her closet, she decides to start discarding things. She ends up with her better shirts and jeans, a dress, and her favorite pair of Converse.

When she can't decide which of the things, she has is the less bad she sighs and then goes to her last and now only option.

"Eric!", she calls and for a second, he doesn't answer. "Eric!", this time, Tris yell.

"Jesus woman, what do you want?!", Eric yells back and she tries not to smile because he sounded annoyed.

"Can you come here for a second?!", she doesn't receive an answer and she was about to yell again when she hears his heavy footsteps coming.

When he appears at the door, he is wearing a Gun and Roses shirt with jeans (a total miracle) and the stupid black combat boots he always wears to literally everywhere. He was putting on his black leather jacket when she eyed him.

"Those boots again. Seriously?"

"Last time I checked; you weren't my mother to tell me what to do".

"So, only your mother tells you what to do?"

"No", he ends and then runs a hand through his hair to style it. "So, what do you want? I have to be at the station at six", he leans from the door and puts a hand in his hip under the jacket, making it a gesture of impatience.

"I need your honest opinion about these", Tris points to her bed, and his grey eyes land in her clothes.

"What I am? A fashion designer?", Tris inhales deeply and then exhales.

"No, but since you're always honest, I need your opinion on these outfits for tonight", Tris is trying to be patient.

He enters her room slowly, crossing his arms in front of his chest. Eric stops beside her, still looking at the clothes in her bed.

"Well, my honest opinion is that they are all shit", Tris tries not to feel hurt, but it was what she expected anyway.

Because if she hates/likes something about Eric is how honest he is with everything. If he doesn't like something, he says it, if he doesn't think a plan is going to work, he says it, if he thinks there is something wrong, he says it. He doesn't care if the other people like his point of view or not, he simply says it and care shit about the others. Tris likes that about him, even if half the time he is hurting her feelings with it. Anyway, she has Christina, who is also veryyyyyy honest.

"What's the occasion? A funeral?", she rolls her eyes.

"I'm going to hang out with my friends", she replies, and he nods.

"At that pathetic bar called Dauntless?", Tris gives him a glare.

"Is not pathetic. Zeke and Shauna own it and is our place. So, please a little respect that I have never insulted that stupid place you like to go to buy clothes".

"Don't insult Hot Topic".

"Then don't insult Dauntless", she establishes, and they look at each other at the eyes for a moment before returning to the task at hand.

"You seriously don't have anything else to wear?", Eric's tone is like he can't believe it. He even turns around to her closet and starts looking at it.

Tris feels judged but doesn't stop him.

"Jesus Christ, I understand now why you don't have a real boyfriend", she rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. "However, I can't let my fake girlfriend walk around the city with these rags. My reputation will be damage".

"Okay, I get it. We can go shopping later, but now I need an outfit", her voice is annoyed, and she can imagine him smirking. Tris can't see him, since he is still looking through her closet.

A few seconds later, Eric stops looking and gets out of the closet something that makes Tris' heart skip a beat.

"Wow, I'm surprised".

When Eric turns around, he is showing her a little short black jumpsuit that was her right size and that Christina gave her for her last birthday. It was pretty and very feminine but also wayyyyyyy short.

"Wear this", Eric says, before throwing it to her. Tris barely catches it.

"Hell no", she says. `

"Is the only decent thing you have in your closet".

"Is way too short. It was in the back for a reason", he rolls his eyes, while Tris is trying not to show how panic she really is.

"Look, you wanted my opinion, you have it now: there is nothing in this closet decent enough, okay? So, take it or leave it, Stiff", Tris wants to hit him so hard, but she can't. She looks at the jumpsuit like is an animal about to bite her.

"Okay", she says. Eric nods and then turns around to the closet again before crunching. "What you're doing now?"

"Choosing you some shoes before you put on those horrible Converse you have", she rolls her eyes. They are her favorite shoes to go out because for working she has to say that her Nikes are better.

He stands up and turns around after a few moments with a pair of combat black boots.

"You apparently have a good taste in just a few things", Eric says.

Tris remembers now that Lynn gave them to her as a gift too. Something about that her shoes were always the same. Tris hasn't used them before because she felt dumb with them on.

"I forgot about their existence", she says, when he offers them to her.

Tris looks at them, they are practically new and now that she looks at them with a new light, she thinks they will go good with the jumpsuit.

"Now, because that thing will make you kind of cold, you can wear this", when the blonde looks at him again, he is giving her the black leather jacket she had at the back of her closet.

She rolls her eyes, thinking that the situation was probably a conspiracy, so she could finally wear her friends' gifts. That or Eric was trying to make her a female version of himself.

Tris barely catches the jacket since she has her hands full.

"You can do the hair and makeup right? Because you will end looking like a Picasso if I do it", Tris nods.

"Yeah, thanks", she says and puts the jumpsuit and the leather jacket in the bed and the boots on the floor.

"Thank me when you see that annoying friend of yours saying 'wow girl, you look amazing'", Tris almost laughs at his bad imitation of Christina's voice.

"Her name is Christina and she is not annoying".

"Whatever", he says and starts getting out of the room but when he is already outside, he turns around again. "Next time we go to the supermarket, we will go to the mall to buy you some clothes because the ones you have, left me traumatized", Tris rolls her eyes.

"If I'm going to wear band shirts and combat boots, I don't want to", he makes an 'I'm sorry' face.

"Not an option, kitten", he says, and when Tris realizes how he just calls her, he is out of view and her heart is beating faster than normal.


	6. trouble, huge trouble

When Tris looks at herself in the mirror that night, she almost doesn't recognize herself. She looks like an alternative version of herself (a version that spends too much time with Eric), but she surprises herself by thinking that she likes it.

Her hair is a little wild, but most of it is behind her ears and she did a pretty decent job with her makeup since she wasn't an expert (that was Christina's thing). Her leather jacket makes her feel more confident, the jumpsuit was too short for her liking, but safe enough and the boots make her feel different, new, and confident because she will feel bad wearing heels. So, she likes the Tris she finds in the mirror because is a new Tris, a Tris she hasn't seen before, but that she liked more than the grey clothes boring Tris she usually saw.

She smiles to herself in the mirror and when is ready she takes her purse; her phone and keys and she exits the home she shares with Eric.

* * *

Tris took a taxi that was more expensive than the bus, but better than taking a few steps to the bar. She is kind of nervous when she arrives because she suddenly feels self-conscious about her clothes. Is not the normal thing she will wear and that makes her worry about the girls' reaction.

She imagines Christina with a wide mouth, Lynn smiling proudly and Shauna being like 'I like your outfit, but I'm kind of confuse'.

So, Tris stops before entering the bar to take a breath. She can hear the 80's music blasting inside and she can see some clients from the windows.

"Is just your friends, Tris", she says to herself and then, before she can lose her nerve, she opens the door and enters.

Dauntless Bar is like entering a whole different world but is one the few places Tris dares to call home. The space is big, has brick walls, black furniture, orange lights, and a stage. The place is full when Tris enters since is Friday and no one wants to lose the knives tournament they always did and the infamous Dauntless Cake. The bar was called Dauntless for something and it was because every weekend they had a tournament of something crazy, mostly a throwing knives competition, and the chocolate cake Tris introduced in their menu a while ago, was the best cake in the city, or at least that was what Uriah told her.

Tris stays at the door for a second, starting to feel awkward because she can't find her friends. That is until she hears her name over the music. When she looks at the bar, she finds Shauna smiling at her.

She smiles back and walks to her. Just like she expected, the woman gave her a look because of her outfit.

"I like your outfit", she says, and Tris giggles when she looks at herself.

"Is very unlike me, right?"

"It's very Dauntless, so no. It fits you", Shauna replies, and Tris gives her a smile. "Lynn is at the back, you know, the usual table. I'm getting some drinks", she explains.

"Do you need help?", Tris asks, looking at the pregnant belly of the woman at the other side of the bar.

"No, don't worry. Being pregnant is not making me ill".

"But stubborn yes", a voice intervenes, and Tris sees Shauna rolling her eyes at the same time Zeke appears from the kitchen.

The man passes an arm around Shauna's shoulders before kissing her on the cheek.

"Hi, Tris", he says, and when his eyes land on her outfit he looks quite unsettle. "What the hell are you wearing?", he is scandalized in a second, and Tris rolls her eyes.

"For God's sake, Zeke", Shauna says.

"But that jumpsuit is too short".

"And that's her choice, not yours, now, stop and finish this, since you are getting annoying".

Before Zeke can protest, Shauna shuts him up and moves to get out of the bar. Tris waits for her and then they walk to the table where Lynn is scrolling through her phone. "Look who I found", Shauna says, and she looks at them. Tris smiles, but she is busier looking at her clothes.

"Holy shit, Tris!", Lynn exclaims, obviously surprised but approving the change. "You look super cool!"

"Thanks, Lynn", Tris tries not to blush.

"Lynn, language, Jesus", Shauna says, and Lynn rolls her eyes. Sisters. 

The three ladies sit down at the table and they start catching up since they haven't seen each other in a long time. Zeke comes over a little while later with their drinks. He gives Shauna an apple juice since she couldn't drink, Lynn got a beer and Tris got a beer too since she decided that she wanted to party a little.

They talked until Christina arrived. She was late but stylish as always.

"I apologize, my client was a total jerk and…wait a second, that's the jumpsuit I gave you?! Holy Mother of Jesus!", and before Shauna could scold her for talking bad, Christina was pulling Tris out of the chair to see the outfit. "I'm very proud of you!", Tris smiled.

"It was actually Eric’s idea". Christina gives her a confused look, just like the rest of the girls.

"Eric? Like that shitty piece of a…?"

"Chris, language!", Shauna says while Christina totally ignores her.

"Yes", Tris answers and Christina opens her mouth wide.

"C'mon, Chris, you have to admit the dude has a good taste in clothing", says Lynn.

"That doesn't change he is an ass", Christina defends, and Tris will have agreed, but then she remembered that he helped her and that he was her fake boyfriend.

Suddenly, all the happiness she felt about been with her friends vanishes when she remembers that she will have to lie to them eventually. She wants to avoid the subject, so she will not say anything until they ask her about it.

"Well yes, but he did a good job. Like, we have a totally new Tris here", Lynn points to Tris and she feels like is true. She feels like a new kind of Tris and she somehow likes it. Likes black more than grey.

Christina rolls her eyes and they return to their seats and to their conversations.

Tris stays quiet for a bit while the other girls talk. She looks at the beer in her hands and feels a little bit out of place. She is lying to her friends, to her family, but she also made a promise with Eric and she couldn't break it. She couldn't say the truth about the faking thing, but she wanted to. Because they were her family and…

Tris sighs and tries to get involved in the conversation. She came to be with her friends, to party a little. And that was what she was going to do.

* * *

Tris tries to concentrate while she aims with the knife at the target on the other side of her. Her vision is getting a little bit blurred, but she blinks, and it goes back to normal. Even though if she leans too much to the right, she loses her balance, and she didn't want that, so she tries to stay the straightest she can.

"C'mon Tris!", someone yells, and she smiles. There is a crowd around her, and her friends are cheering for her. Zeke is supervising the competition, and Shauna is trying to take care of a very drunk Lynn who won a shot competition earlier. Christina is the only one who is in the front row, a little tipsy as well.

Tris looks at the target for the last time, before she throws the knife, and it lands inside the circle. The bar's crowd explodes in cheers and Tris grins and raises her hand. Christina hugs her and they move to the side to give the space to Tris' opponent.

It's a middle-aged man who takes a shot from Zeke's hand, drinks it, and then walks clumsily to the place she was before. The crowd stops cheering when Zeke calls for silence and they wait quietly for the man to throw his knife.

Someone cheers for him, but Tris is too busy conversating with Christina.

"Hey, is true Caleb and Peter are going to marry soon?"

"Yeah", Tris answers, with an arm around Christina.

"Peter was an ass but since he is with your brother, I think he is a better person", Tris laughs loudly than necessary.

"I know", Christina laughs too before she takes another sip of her beer. Tris lost count of how many she had, but she also lost the count of how many shots she has drink since the competition started.

"He sent me the invitation and then called me to ask me to help him with the planning since I have experience in the field", Christina sounds very drunk, but her words are still clear.

"Caleb and Peter?"

"Who else? I said yes, of course. Weddings have always mean free alcohol and I'm ready for anything that has alcohol", Tris was going to toast for that, when the crowd cheered. When Christina and Tris looked ahead, they found that the middle-aged man's knife landed inside the circle for just a few centimeters.

Tris steps forward while Zeke serves another shot. She drinks it when she arrives beside him, and then takes a knife and stops at the place she must shoot from.

The place stays quiet in the majority and Tris must blink a few times more than usual to clear her vision. She aims the knife and then she throws it. She stumbles a little, but the cheer of the crowd confirms her that she hit inside the circle.

"Wooohooooo!", Christina cheers and Tris smiles before going back to her friend.

The middle-aged man approaches Zeke to take his shot of whiskey and Chris surrounds Tris in half a hug. Tris accepts her because it's her best friend.

"Caleb told me he was going to write you about the day and hour for the plan", Christina starts again.

"Well, he needs to make sure I can first", they both laugh from the nothing.

Tris drinks and shoots a few more times until she feels like her body is going to fall somewhere. She was about to do it, but the middle-aged man falls drunk first, so Tris wins the competition. The crowd cheered for her and Zeke gave the winning price, a bar discount and one hundred dollars. She accepted the money, even though she ended put it in the tip jar at the bar.

The bar returns to the music and Zeke takes Christina and Tris to the bar where the other girls are waiting. Tris sits in one of the chairs and puts her head in the bar. She is too drunk to even stand up and she doesn't know what time it is.

"Way to go, Tris. But remind me to never give you a knife", Zeke says and the only thing she can do is smile.

"I honestly think that you should all go home", says Shauna and for once, Zeke agrees.

"But we haven't' dance", Christina says.

"That's trueeeeeeeeeee", Lynn says, who is quite drunk. Shauna smiles but then gets serious again.

"We came to party hard!", Christina says.

"Yeahhhhhhhhh!", Tris says and before Shauna, can stop them, Tris grabbed Christina and Lynn's hand and they left to dance close to the stage where a band was playing.

* * *

A while later, well, Tris doesn't know how much since she lost herself dancing and drinking even more with the girls. She was so drunk that couldn't even stay seated in the booth she was at. Christina was pass out in the booth in front of her, Lynn was knock out in the couch in Zeke’s office and Will was on his way to pick Christina up.

The only one that hasn't call someone was Tris and she didn't want to let Zeke take her home since he didn't want to leave Shauna alone in a bar.

Thinking about that, Tris looked up for her purse and got out her phone. She rubbed her eyes to see the screen better, but it didn't do too much. She tries even harder until she found what she was searching for. Once she saw the calling symbol, she put her phone on her ear and she loses her balance and fell into the booth like Christina on the other side.

She giggled but didn't let go of her phone. She tried to sit back up but wasn't successful, so she decided to stay down, looking at the ceiling and the orange lights of the bar.

"What do you want?", says a voice on the other side of the phone after a while.

She smiles like an idiot.

"Hiiiiiii Eric", she greats, and the other side stays silent for a moment. A too-long moment that she thought that he had hung up.

"Are you drunk?", he asks, and his voice doesn't sound pleased.

"Probably?", it sounds more like a question than an answer, so she giggles again because of her stupidity.

Tris hears him sigh heavily at the other side, but the only thing she can think of is how good he looked punching the bag back home.

"Can you come for me so we can have some fun?", she asks, and sober Tris will totally regret this in the morning.

Eric laughs at the other side of the phone.

"I think you had too much fun for the night".

"Yeah, but it wasn't with youuuuuu", Tris sounds like a child. She tries to sit down again and this time she does it with the table's help.

Shauna is looking at her from the bar. So, Tris waves at her with the hand and gives her a very drunk smile.

"Look, Tris, I'm at work, I can't pick you up. Can you ask a friend to take you home?"

"Chris is pass out", she responds, looking at the dark-haired woman at the other side of the table. "C'mon, bear, I'm not that drunk and I wanna have fun with you".

She is imagining what kind of fun while Eric sighs tiredly at the other side of the phone.

"Bear? Seriously?"

"Don't judge me, Coulter. You are big and scary, but fluffy at the same time as a bear", and she has a stupid big grin at the end of that sentence.

"Yeah, whatever. Can you pass me one of your friends? One that is actually sober?"

She looks at Shauna who is approaching right now.

"Oh, how lucky. Shauna is coming", she says and when the pregnant woman arrives, she looks at her with a motherly look.

"Please tell me you aren't' calling your ex", she says, and Tris looks at her offended.

"Why will I be calling that piece of…?"

"Language, and be careful that he is Zeke's best friend", Tris rolls her eyes.

"Is actually my boyfriend, who is kind of a tease", she explains, and Shauna frowns a little.

"Boyfriend? Like, for real?", Tris nods.

"Actually, he wants to talk to you", the blonde offers the pregnant woman her phone and she takes it.

Tris hears some pieces of the conversation. Hears her name, Zeke's, something about a knife competition, and then the bar's name. Tris got tired suddenly and put her head over the table and started falling asleep when Shauna ended the call.

"Tris, I talked to your boyfriend", the blonde looks at Shauna sleepily. "He is coming for you, so don't move, okay?", Tris simply nods.

Shauna puts her phone back in her purse and then disappears with a little smile on her lips.

* * *

Tris wakes up when she hears her name been called. She raises her head from the table and looks ahead. Christina is not at the other booth anymore, so she supposes that Will already came for her but when she hears her name again, she turns to her right, making a face of pain, because her neck hurts.

But the pain disappears from her drunk mind when she finds Eric standing beside the table with a not so pleased face.

"I'm in trouble?"

"Huge trouble", he answers, and she makes a guilty face. "C'mon, we are leaving".

Tris starts to get up, but when she takes a step to walk, she stumbles and will have fall if it wasn't because Eric grabbed her in time.

"Jesus", he says, and she giggles.

"Do you need help taking her to the car?", another voice asks and they both turn to see Zeke.

"No", it's Eric's plain answer before he took Tris by her legs and put her over his shoulder.

"Alright. Don't forget this", Zeke says, giving Eric Tris' purse.

Eric takes it and without saying anything else, he starts walking to the exit. Tris yells goodbye to Shauna and Zeke and then starts giggling like a maniac.

"What's so funny?", Eric asks. The night is cold, but Tris is too drunk to notice it, and Eric too mad to care.

"Your butt looks good from here", she answers and then laughs. Eric doesn't' say anything.

Tris says a few more gibberish until Eric stops in front of a police car.

"Oh, shit, I'm going to jail?"

"If you don't keep your mouth shut", but Tris simply giggled while he opened the back seat and put her on the floor.

Tris tried to walk, but she stumbles again, and Eric had to catch her.

"I will never let you drink so much again", he says, more to himself than her. Tris giggles before he helps her getting inside the car.

"You look so hot when you put on your working clothes", she says, looking at him while he tries to put her seatbelt on.

"Do I?", he asks sarcastically and Tris scoffs.

He is so close that she can smell his perfume. Is the sweetest smell for her.

"And you smell so good too", Eric rolls his eyes before giving her her purse and then closing the door.

When the police car started to move Tris was excited, looking through the window like she was a child, but then, somewhere between the bar and home, she started to feel sick like she wanted to throw up.

"Bear", she calls, making a face and touching her forehead with her hand. Eric doesn't answer, because he is too busy listening to his stupid loud music.

She punches the metal wall that separated the back seat from the front and that gets his attention.

"For fuck's sake! What do you want?!", he exclaims and if Tris were sober, she will have a snap back at him, but her head was spinning, and her stomach was hurting.

"Stop the car. I'm not feeling good", she says, in barely a whisper. Eric must turn the volume down and then look at her across the mirror.

"What did you say?"

"Stop the fucking car!", she yells, louder and feeling worse. He appears to understand that she is not feeling well, because he does what she says.

Tris tries to open the door, but it doesn't. Is not until Eric opens it and gets her seatbelt off that she gets out and, as soon as she does that, she vomits.

"Thank God that wasn't on my shoes", Eric says, but Tris is too busy vomiting under a tree to listen.

The blonde hears someone sigh tiredly and then a hand holding her short hair, so it didn't get dirty while she throws up in the street. Eric didn't say anything, he simply holds her hair and waits until she finished.

When Tris felt like she didn't have anything else to vomit, she straightened again and hide her face in her hands. Her head was spinning a little, but her stomach didn't hurt anymore.

"Do you feel better?", Eric asks, and she gets her hands off from her face and looks at him surprised, like she forgot he was there.

They look at each other for a few seconds. In those seconds, Tris realized that his hands were on her shoulders, but that it was because she stumbled a little and he was trying to keep her in place.

Without thinking too much, because she was still drunk, she closed the distance between them, so her arms surrounded his waist and her face crashed with his chest. It was their first hug.

Eric tensed up and he didn't hug her back, but she didn't want that, she only wanted to feel his warmth, even if it was for once, even if she couldn't remember it later.

He was warm, indeed, and he smelled super good and hugging him remind her of a fluffy teddy bear. The thought made her smile and close her eyes, made her happy for a few seconds.

"You're super drunk", he says, and she nods a few times.

"Maybe", she answers and before he can push her from the hug, she speaks again. "Just take me home, bear".

And so, he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dont know if this was embarrassing enough. It was inspired by that part in the book where she was high on the Peace serum. 😂🤦♀️


	7. real

The embarrassment is worse than the hangover or at least that's what Tris wants to believe. When she wakes up the next day, she feels that her head is going to explode, that her stomach is giving her hell, and that she remembers too much. Like, she remembers the knife competition, the dancing, the drinking, and (the worst part), the way home with Eric.

It's not until she remembers the things she said and the hug she gave him that she feels like she wants to be swallow by the earth and never see him again. She couldn't believe she said those things, she couldn't believe she drank too much to say those things, to call him, in the first place.

She doesn't want to get out of her room, where he left her before returning to work. She doesn't want to see him because she feels too ashamed of what she said and did the night before, but she can't hide from him forever, which is not her style.

After walking in circles around her room, she decided that she had to confront her problems because she isn’t a coward, so she takes a few breaths before getting her stuff to take a shower. Because she can't confront him without a shower.

Tris literally runs to the bathroom and once she is inside, she takes the coldest and longest shower of her existence. Once she is wearing comfy and cleans clothes and she is ready, she gets out, puts her stuff back in her room, makes her bed, and goes out to face him, or at least, to be brave for once.

When she steps into the living room, her heart skips a beat. Eric is sitting on his side of the couch, with his feet over the coffee table while he watches what looks like a retransmission of a Chicago Bulls game. He has a mug of coffee in his hand and is wearing just sweatpants. Meaning that his sculptural chest is at the view.

Tris tries not to look, even though, she can't see much because he is giving her his back. She rubs her eyes and is about to move to the kitchen when she suddenly hears him move.

"Morning", he greets, and Tris almost jumps. When she looks at him again, he has the usual serious face.

"More like afternoon", she corrects, since is passed one in the afternoon. He smirks then and gets up from the couch with his mug of coffee in his hand.

"So, I guess you are okay, since you are snappy as always", she rolls her eyes.

"Just a little headache", she corrects, and he nods a few times. Before he can say anything else and Tris can't make a fool of herself again, because he is in front of her without a shirt, she turns to the kitchen to get some food and Panadol for her headache.

"I made coffee", he announces and when she turns around from the cupboard from where she is taking the Panadol, he is serving himself more coffee. Now that she thinks about it, he looks like he just woke up too, or at least that what his messy blond hair says.

"Thanks", she says, and she is not sure if it was because of the coffee or for what he did last night.

Tris returns to her pills and Eric exits the kitchen after filling his mug again. A while later, when she sits down next to him to eat a mediocre sandwich and drink coffee, she forgets about her past drunk self, until half time comes, and they start giving commercials. Eric mutes the TV and turns to her with his coffee still in hand.

"So, about last night", he starts, and Tris starts coughing from the nothing and Eric laughs.

Tris glares at him and he keeps laughing until she drinks from her coffee and recuperates the little dignity she has left. Once she is alright and Eric is a fucking laughing mess, she kicks him and he hits her back in the arm.

"Don't laugh at me".

"You're hilarious", he has a naughty smirk on his face now and Tris wants to wipe it out…now…with a kiss. Wait, what?

"Very funny", she says sarcastically.

"Yes, it's funny because who the hells will call her boyfriend bear as a pet name?", Tris tries to ignore him because she knows he only wants to annoy her.

"Look, I was drunk. People say and do stupid shit when they are drunk", she attempts to go back at her meal, but he interrupts her.

"Reminds me that you shouldn't be that drunk again. You told your friend I was your boyfriend", Eric is mocking her, is teasing her, he wants her to explode, and Tris is not going to let him win. "Like, aren't you supposed, to be honest when you are drunk?"

"You like it, didn't you?", she looks at him suddenly and he looks at her back with raised eyebrows. His dermals suddenly make him look intimidating. Just like the piercings in his ears.

"What part exactly? Not when you almost ruined my boots, definitely".

"That I called you bear, that I call you my boyfriend", she says, and she is dead serious. He looks at her seriously, but then he starts laughing, loudly than truly necessary. When Tris opens her mouth to tell him something, both of them hear her phone ringing from her room.

Tris gets up with her things to go, but when she passes beside him, she stops.

"I think you are starting to like this faking thing more than you should".

"We haven't faked anything yet".

"That's the thing, bear. You are liking it already and we haven't started it yet", she gives him one of her devilish smirks and before he can say something, Tris disappears into the hallway, feeling invincible.

* * *

To Tris' surprise, her phone ringing was a videocall from Uriah. Something that she took almost immediately, making her forget of Eric, her food, and if she was wearing decent clothes or not.

Uriah was one of her best friends (beside Christina, obviously) and like a little brother to her. Uriah and Christina were the first idiots she met when she was in college and the ones who introduced her to the rest of the idiots, she calls family now. It was the first time she has seen him since he took that job that made him travel more than stay at one place.

He was talking to her about him receiving Caleb and Peter's wedding invitation when Eric appeared at her door. More like he opened her door without knocking.

"Where did you put the toothpaste?", he asks, and she looks at him with a death glare.

"I'm in the middle of something".

"Just tell me where you put the toothpaste", he insists.

"Isn't at the bathroom? Right beside the shampoo".

"I search every cupboard in that fricking place", Tris rolls her eyes, before turning to the screen. Uriah is looking at her with a confused face.

"Hey, Uri. Can you give me a few seconds? I will come right back", Tris smiles sheepishly to her friend.

"Take your time, love. I'll be here", he answers with a smile.

Tris leaves her phone in her bed and then jumps out of bed. She pushes Eric out of her room and helps him search for the toothpaste. They find it, for some reason, in the kitchen.

"Now, leave me alone".

"Of course, love", he says, imitating Uriah's voice. Tris suddenly stops to look at him.

"Don't you dare, Uriah is a good friend, don't mock him", she says, but he does an indifferent move of his shoulders.

"I'm just saying".

"Yeah, right", she turns and returns to her room, while he goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth. She hopes that he also brushes out his existence.

When she returns to her conversation with Uriah, she is faking a smile.

"Sorry about that. Some men lose things and then they blame other people".

"Ha reminds me of Zeke", Uriah chuckles and Tris smiles. "But standing Zeke is Shauna's job now. By the way, how they are?"

"I saw them yesterday and they were good. Shauna's belly is getting bigger and Zeke more overprotective".

"Hahaha, I imagine that. Shauna hates when he gets protective. I hope I'm home to see my niece when she is born".

"I hope you are. 'Cause going out without you is getting boring".

"Haha, I knew you couldn't live without me", Tris chuckles. "So, like I was saying, I received Caleb and Peter's wedding invitation. My reaction was like 'Finally!'"

"It was the same for me!", Tris says, laughing. "I'm so happy for them. They have been together for ages and it was time already".

"Yes. I think I can get a few days off to go to the wedding, but I can't promise anything".

"Hey, no pressure", Tris is smiling, until she recognizes a certain type of smile in his face that only tells her trouble. "Why are you smiling like that?"

"Well, now that we talk about weddings, Caleb told me that you have a boyfriend", he says and when Tris starts blushing, she tries to hide her face behind one hand. "Oh, gosh, is true?!"

Tris must laugh because Uriah's face is hilarious. He is surprised like he didn't believe the news until now that she was blushing. The blonde swallows, thinking that she will lie to her friend, her best friend.

"Yeah, is true".

"Who is he?! Tell me, girl!", she smiles. She thinks that it's too natural to be true. "Are you taking him to Caleb's wedding? If you do, I'll go, yes or yes".

"God, Uriah, calm down", she giggles, but he is deadly serious, she knows. "His name is Eric and yes, I'll take him to Caleb's wedding, don't worry".

"Holy shit!", he starts laughing. "Wait a second, Eric wasn't the name of that asshole you had as a roommate? You complained a lot about him", Tris makes a face. "It's the same?!", Uriah gasps and Tris laughs loudly. "Are you for real?! Like real?!"

"Yeah".

"I thought you hate him", Tris lifts her shoulders.

"Well, you know what they say, there is only one step between love and hate".

"Oh, my God", Uriah looks traumatized and Tris chuckles.

That's when she sees Eric pass and an idea pops in her head.

"Since you don't believe me, I'm going to present it to you. Well, you kind of know him already, but not as my boyfriend", she says, and she gets up from her bed and starts walking. "Eric!"

He doesn't answer, of course. Tris finds him in the kitchen.

This time, he is wearing a shirt and he is drinking from a water bottle. He looks at her with an annoyed face and she gives him a look. A look he doesn't understand until Tris stops and turns so; he can be seen in the camera.

"Uri, this is Eric. Eric, this is one of my best friends that I talk to you about", she says, looking back at him. She gives another glare and he understands. He steps closer to her and rounds her waist with one of his arms, so his face rests over her shoulder.

"Hi", Eric greets. "Good to finally meet you", he sounds convincing. Tris is even a little surprised.

"I can say the same", Uriah says. "I hope she told you good things about me", they all chuckle.

"She did", he says, and Eric then kisses her on the cheek. If Tris wasn't surprised by now, she is then. But then a knot forms in her stomach when she remembers that he is just acting. "Tris said you were a journalist and that's why you aren't around so much?"

"Oh, yes, I am. I will be reporting a Lakers' game tonight and that's why I'm currently in Los Angeles", Tris remembered just telling him that once. Didn't think he will pay attention.

"The Lakers? That sounds cool", he says and in less than five minutes, Eric was the one having a video call with Uriah and she was left behind.

Tris will laugh if it wasn't because she was more busy thinking that it was weird. It was weird for to Eric kiss her on the cheek, to hold her close to him, to talk with one of her friends about sports like it was the most normal thing ever. It was almost like he was genuinely trying to fit.

And because of that, Tris surprised herself for a moment wishing that he will always hold her close, kiss her on the cheek with affection or talk with her friends like he was one of them. But then reality hits her in the face, and she shakes her thoughts away.

Because they were faking.

Nothing of it was real.


	8. family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prepare yourselves for what comes next.

"Before we meet Caleb and Peter, I need to tell you something", Tris starts.

She has her hands inside the pockets of her big grey hoodie and Christina is dressed more stylishly, of course. They were walking to Amity Café where they spent most of their college years before Dauntless was something. It was where Caleb and Peter met, but the place where they could sit down, have a good coffee, and then a good chat because the place is always full of good vibes and the owner is a very kind woman that Tris likes very much.

"Why you make it sound like you are in big trouble and you need my legal advice?", Christina asks, looking at her.

"It's not that bad".

"So, it's bad but not that bad?", Tris rolls her eyes. "

It's something you aren't going to like, but that I want to tell you before someone else does", Tris explains, but her dark-haired friend, is still looking at her like she doesn’t believe shit from behind her sunglasses.

"Okay, shoot".

"Eric is my boyfriend", she spats and a second later she is suddenly stopping in the middle of the sidewalk because Christina is having a cough attack.

Tris runs to help her but ends up laughing.

"Stop it", Christina says and soon enough, they are laughing together, and the people of Chicago are looking at them like they are crazy. They don't care, at all. Once Christina is alright again, they start walking.

"Please tell that your boyfriend is not the same asshole you live with", Christina begs, once they stopped at a crosswalk.

"Sorry to disappoint", and Christina facepalms herself. "But is the same Eric".

"How? Why? What is happening?!", Tris can't stop a laugh from escaping her, but luckily she has an answer to all her questions.

"I guess it happened. You know, we have been sharing the same apartment for like three years", it was part of the lie, of course.

It was part of the explanation they discussed. Even though, Eric and she have, indeed, share an apartment for three years.

"I thought you hated each other", Christina gives her a look, that looks she always gives to people when she is trying to see if they are lying. Tris tries to pose as calmly as she could since Christina wasn't a lawyer for nothing.

"At the beginning, yes, but from a year ago, things kind of changed and now we are together". Christina looks at her straight in the eyes, like she is looking for a lie, but Tris stands the best she can. The dark-haired woman stops staring when they need to cross the street. They stay in silence while they cross, and then Christina talks.

"Okay. I guess that shit they say about love and hate can be, somehow, real, but promise me that if he gets shitty, at least once, you are going to kick him in the balls", Tris rolls her eyes.

"He is a nice guy once you meet him", this time Christina is the one who rolls her eyes.

Not even Tris is sure from where the hell that came from.

"Of course, he has his moments where you want to kick him, but all men are like that.

"You should know that since you been married to Will for four years".

"Ahhhhh, yeah, I get it. Okay, I will respect your decision, even if I think he is an ass. I will support you, 'cause that's what best friends do, but next time, don't tell me in the middle of the street", they laugh, and Christina surrounds her waist with one of her arms.

Tris feels good about telling Christina, even if it was a lie, it felt good to laugh with her best friend.

* * *

When they arrived at Amity, Tris and Christina greet Johanna, the owner. They haven't seen each other in what feels like ages, even if Tris came from time to time to still talk to the woman and buy coffee, because, is the best in all Chicago.

They ordered that same coffee they love so much, and they sat down to wait for Caleb and Peter. Christina was explaining to Tris one of her last cases when the blonde hears her name been called. When she looks, Caleb and Peter are walking their way.

Tris smiles automatically and gets up. They collide into a huge hug that almost made them fall. They haven't' seen each other in what feels forever, even if they practically live in the same city.

"God is so good to see you, little Bea", he says, and Tris chuckles.

"You haven't used that nickname since we were children", she smiles, and he does too when they look at each other again. Caleb stays with his arm over her shoulders, and she stays with her arms around his waist.

"Well, in my opinion, it will always be better than Tris", she rolls her eyes. Caleb never liked that nickname, so he sometimes called her for her real name, a name she didn't like at all. Hence the nickname.

"If you haven't noticed, I'm here too", they both turn to Peter, who has a sarcastic smile on his face and looks like a kicked puppy.

"Are you jealous?", Caleb asks.

"You wish", Peter answers. Tris lets go from Caleb and steps closer to Peter to give him a hug too.

"Is good to see you too, Pete", she says, and their hug is gentler and shorter than Caleb's but is still a hug.

"Likewise, Tris".

If they told Tris that she will be hugging Peter and telling him that or that he will be getting married to her brother, a few years back, she will have a laugh and tell them they were crazy. Because back then she hated Peter and she hated the History professor that made her do that old project with him, but now she thinks differently, since thanks to that stupid project Peter and she came to Amity and he met Caleb. They always deny it, but it was love at first sight. Even Johanna shiped/ships them.

"Caleb, Peter!", talking about her, she approaches with a smile. Both greet and hug her, and they order coffees before greeting Christina and seating down at the table they chose.

The planning started right away since Tris had work and she was very tired. Caleb and Peter said their wants and their ideas and Christina told them all her contacts, completed their ideas, and even recommended some things like Tris did too. They drink coffee and talk about other things too, but the mere fact that they all together makes her feel good.

When was time to say goodbye she hugs them all tightly and promises to call.

"Send our hellos to Eric", they say, and she nods a few times. She wasn't going to, but they didn't have to know that. "Also, call mom and dad, they complain that you haven't' call them".

"I know, I've been busy", she explains, but it was a lame excuse.

Calling back home is a little difficult since she left her home. Her father wasn't happy with her carrier choice, something about wanting her to be a politician like him since Caleb decided to be a science teacher.

"Well, try to call them this week, at least, please", Caleb says, and Tris nods a few times before they hug again.

When Tris leaves Amity, she has mixed feelings.

* * *

Tris is on her way home when she suddenly hears her phone ringing. She stops for a second to take it, but when she looks at the ID, she discovers is Eric. She rolls her eyes, thinking that maybe he is calling to tell her to bring beer or pizza on her way home.

"What?", she snaps, starting to walk again.

"Well, hello to you too, kitten", Eric's voice is weird since he sounds gentler and faker than usual. Tris frowns, confused.

"Why you sound so weird?"

"Yeah, I'm okay, how about you?", he asks, and Tris understands that maybe he isn't alone, and he must be acting out.

"Do you need something?"

"Actually, yes. I need to come to the station to pick me up. You aren't working, right?"

"What did you do?"

"I will tell you when you are here", he says and Tris sighs. She stops walking and turns around putting some of her hair behind one of her ears.

"Okay", she says.

"Thanks. I love you", her heart skips a beat, but she keeps walking to get a taxi. She knows he doesn't mean it; she knows he is only faking it because he is talking in front of someone who thinks they are together.

She hangs up and concentrates on looking for a taxi.

* * *

When Tris arrives at the station the sky is dark, and she is kind of worried. Three years was enough for her to know that Eric's job is dangerous, and he could get in any type of trouble because he is kind of reckless and hell stubborn, but that he also loves his job. Once he was suspended from his position for making a suspect talk thought a beating so hard, he ended up in the hospital. The guy lived to tell the tale, but Eric's punches weren't something he will forget soon.

Tris enters the station and approaches the front desk and is about to talk to the police officer there when she hears her name. She turns to find Nita, Eric's partner.

The woman is tall and has a great shape. A shape that Tris doesn't have of course, nor her bronze skin or her beautiful hair. Well, we can only say that Tris got self-conscious of her clothes and body just because a more attractive woman appeared.

"I'm Nita, I think we have met before", she says, offering her hand to shake and a smile.

"Yes", Tris replies, shaking her hand. Nita has come over a few times to give papers to Eric. She always though that she likes Eric more than a partner, but that's nothing of her business, obviously.

"Eric is at the Intelligence Unit; he asked me to take you. Follow me", she says, and Tris starts to follow her.

They walk to the belly of the police station, where there are a lot of desks and a lot of movement. She sees blue everywhere and everyone is too busy to notice them. They go up some stairs and they enter a door where they have fewer desks and the people are dressed in casual clothes like Eric and Nita.

All of them turn around to see them enter and when eyes land on Tris, she feels kind of nervous. She hates when she is the center of attention.

"Eric, your girl is here for you", Nita moves to the side and Tris can see the person she is looking at.

Eric is seating down at one of the desks at the back. He has an annoyed expression on his face and Tris discovers why when she sees his right arm in a sling. When the blond sees her, he gets up almost immediately and starts getting his stuff.

"We had a difficult case today, we took him at the hospital, but David doesn't let him drive like this", she explains, and Tris understands. She is not surprised he got wounded, being the idiot, he is.

She is going to say something when someone else approached. A brown-haired, tall man with grey eyes that looked kind of familiar stepped beside Nita and offered her a smile. Tris is confused for a few seconds.

"I think they haven't presented us. I'm Matthew, Eric's brother", Tris opens her eyes wide. She didn't know Eric had a brother, or family at all.

"Brother?", she asks, trying to not sound rude.

"Yes. Oh, my God, don't tell me he hasn't talked about me?"

"Ah, sorry, he hasn’t", she says, being honest for once.

"Well, I'm not surprised, since he doesn't even talk to me at work. But here we are, so I'm glad I can meet you. When he told me he got a girlfriend, I was over the moon. Like, Eric with a girlfriend? The world must be ending!", Tris wants to laugh.

Eric is boyfriend material if it wasn't for the fact that he has attitude issues and he doesn't do that of 'getting close to people'.

Looking at the man before her she notices that he has the same eyes as Eric, that they don’t look alike too much but then, when he smiles excited again, she feels sorry for him since all of this is not real.

Tris is about to say something, but Eric suddenly appears beside her and puts his good hand in her back. She kind of tenses for a second.

"Okay, I'm ready, let's go", when Tris looks at him, he has that look of pleading in his eyes.

"Eric don't be mean. I'm just meeting your girlfriend", Matthew says, while Nita tries not to laugh.

"You can meet later. Bye", the blond spats and before Tris can say something, Eric pushes her out of the place.

Eric takes her by the hand with his good one and pulls her out of the station. When they are out, he leads her to the parking lot. He is upset, Tris can notice that, but she doesn't know if it is because she just met his brother or because he is hurt and can't drive himself home.

Although, Tris can't stop herself from noticing that he is holding her hand, that it's warm and their fingers are intertwined. Is the first time they do that and for moments it feels personal, real.

When they arrive at his car, Eric lets go of her hand and gets his keys from his pocket.

"You know how to drive, right?", he asks, and Tris rolls her eyes.

"Of course, I do. The only reason I don't have a car is that is not necessary", she takes the keys and they get to their respective places.

Tris driving is kind of rusty because she haven't drive in a very long time, but they don't die. What she does is complain of Eric's music, since he put Iron Maiden and changed the 'driver picks the music; shotgun shuts his cakehole' rule.

"Quit that face", he says, when they stop at a red light.

"It's the only one I have", she responds, without looking at him.

They stay in silence, but Iron Maiden keeps playing until Eric suddenly lowers the volume. Tris looks at him, but he is already looking at her with a weird face.

"What happened?", Eric hesitates for a moment or two, still looking at her.

"I want to apologize", Tris moves her head confused.

"Why exactly?", she is surprised, since Eric isn't someone to apologize. At least he has never apologized to her before.

"Because of Matt", Eric looks at the front, but Tris is still looking at him. "He is fucking annoying", she chuckles, turning her head ahead to move when the light changes.

"I think he is nice".

"And is always getting his where he shouldn’t", he completes. "Look, I know this faking thing was supposed to be a lie to your family and friends, but when you called me that night you got drunk, Matt heard my conversation with your friend…I think her name was Sasha…"

"Shauna", she corrects him.

"Whatever. The point is that your friend mentioned that you were drunk and that her boyfriend could take you home, but then I said that I had to do it because I was your 'boyfriend'", he does the comas with his hands, even if one is inside a sling. "Matt was behind me when I said that, I didn't saw him and now he doesn't shut up about it", Eric sighs tiredly while he rolls his eyes. "I don't care about what he thinks, but I hate when he gets into my stuff".

"Brothers have always been like that", Tris says, without looking at him because she is driving.

"Older brothers are the worst".

"Oh, so you're the youngest?", she looks at him for a second. She has never imagined him as an older brother. But, again, she didn't imagine him with a family since he never mentioned one.

"No. But that is not the topic", he replies.

"So, you are the middle child? That explains a lot". Tris chuckles and Eric looks at her offended.

"What does that even mean?"

"Nothing. Back to the topic", she says and smiles a little. "You don't like Matthew knowing that you have a fake girlfriend".

"He doesn't know we are faking. But the worse part of everything is that he probably already tell my mother. And she is the queen of gossip, definitely", Tris tries to hold her chuckle, but she fails quite miserably. "It's not funny, kitten", Tris thinks that he calls her that because he thinks she hates the pet name (or pet names in general).

"Is just that I didn't know anything about you a few hours ago, and suddenly I know that you have an older brother, a possible younger sibling, and a mother. And that you are suffering because of what your mother can think about you".

"I don't care about what my mother thinks about me", he sounds very annoyed by the subject, so Tris concludes that he does care. "Is just that she has been trying to control me all my life and if she knows I have a significant other, she will want to get in the middle of it. And even if is fake, I don't want her to get into my things".

Tris is not quite surprised with that thing about a controlling mother. Eric is a rebel. His attitude, his ways, his personality, all him, says it. Tris imagines that he rebelled against his mother and that he is exactly what she didn't want him to be in the first place. She knows because she met someone like that once, but instead of a mother it was a father and she has her experience.

"Okay then. Apology accepted. Though this is fake, you can tell him or your mother that we broke up after Caleb's wedding".

Tris' voice is sure of what she is saying, but her heart is beating hard like when it's scared of something.

"Of course, I'm going to tell them that we broke up, but for now, I have to stand his ass at work and probably my mom when she calls. If they would have told me he was in that station when I got transferred, I will have asked for another station, but no. I didn't even know he was forensic until I met him there".

"You have family issues", they stop in another red light and Tris looks at him. It's not a question and Eric doesn't answer it, so Tris keeps talking. "If it serves of something, my dad almost disowned me because I didn't want to be a politician like he wanted me to do", Eric looks at her but doesn't say anything. "He has an important position with the mayor, and since Caleb wanted to be a science teacher, my dad tried to convince me to give up on my dreams and get into politics to keep up with his work", Tris chuckles remembering the disappointed face he made that afternoon she graduated. "But then I told him that I wasn't going to waste my life in an office, so I went to college and studied something to help others as my mother did. Has you may know, I started Medical School and left soon after, but the point here is that we haven't talk like father and daughter since a lot time ago", Tris looks ahead again. "So, yeah, you don't have to feel bad about having family issues".

After that, they don't speak again. Eric stays silent and Tris doesn't dare to make him talk. She even turns the volume up, so the silence doesn't feel awkward.

When they get home, they order pizza because is Eric's turn to cook and he couldn't because his arm in the sling (is not like he would have cook if he was alright either way). But they didn't talk about that subject again and Tris didn't regret telling him, either way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since this is an AU, I decided to change things up a little. Matthew, the dude that appears in the third book, is Eric's older brother for the sake of this story. I also have other weird things like this for the future.  
> Want to let you know that I haven't finish this story at all and I'm having trouble with inspiration, so I may update even more slower from now on because I'm still thinking what the hell to do.


	9. hug

Tris sometimes hated her job. Sometimes shitty things happen, and she can't control them. She hates when that happens, but she guesses that is human to feel awful when someone is dying in front of you and you can't do anything to stop it.

When she steps into the apartment she shares with Eric, she looks like a zombie. She kind of cried in the bathroom after what happened and the only thing, she wanted was to take a bath and sleep until she felt better.

She was so into her memories of that moment, that she didn't even notice Eric punching his bag on the balcony, nor the sarcastic remark he said when he saw her. She simply went directly to her room, then to the bathroom, and then to her room again.

She went to sleep and miraculously fell asleep right away.

* * *

Tris wakes up thanks to someone's heavy feet against the floor. When she opens an eye, Eric is at her door looking at her with a serious expression, almost like he is worried or something. She thinks that that emotion in his features looks quite weird since she never thought he will worry about something in his life, never less, her.

He leans on the door and crosses his arms as much as his wounded arm lets him. He stopped using the sling when 'the stupid shit didn't let him do his job right' so now he went everywhere with just a bandage around his stitches.

Tris turns in bed until she is on her back and rubs her face.

"What time is it?"

"Almost two in the afternoon", he answers, and she is not surprised she slept that much. Her shift ended at seven, but she went out at night because of paperwork and ended arriving at home at almost nine. When she was tired, she sleeps a lot, and after long difficult shifts, she simply wants to die.

Tris sighs and after yawning, she looks at him with tired eyes. He is wearing sweatpants, unpaired socks, and a black tank top that lets his muscled arms at the view but also the bandage that is wrapping his wound.

"What do you want?", she doesn't mean to sound rude, but his footsteps woke her.

"I was going to tell you that we need to go grocery shopping but I think we should leave it for later", his voice is gentle, like he knows that she is tired like he knows what happened in the hospital.

Tris sits down slowly in bed. She puts her hair behind both her ears and rubs her eyes. She was kind of hungry and wanted to sleep a little more, but she was sure that she wasn't going to get any since he woke her up with his 'delicate' footsteps. Then she remembers her shift and even if she hates going grocery shopping, she needed something to distract herself with before she started remembering everything. Tris didn't want to cry, not with Eric here.

She took too long to answer since the next thing she notices is that Eric is approaching her and then is sitting on the edge of her bed, right in front of her. They have space between them, but the way he looks at her makes her feel weird. Is gentle, worried, almost like…he understands her.

"I know this is nothing of my business, but is everything okay?", for a few seconds she doesn't even believe her ears. Is Eric worried or is it just her dreaming and imagining things? "I told you you looked like shit when you arrived, and I think you didn't even notice me. I got to accept that I got a little worried since you aren't one to not insult me back".

Tris could have laughed if it wasn't because the absurdity of the situation got her speechless. Like, Eric is seriously worried by her? The same Eric that always laughed when bad things happened to her and was always mocking her and complaining about her way of doing things? The same Eric that started an argument in the middle of the supermarket because he wanted nuggets with less fat?

She decides to say something before the staring she is doing back at him, can look weird or he can make a joke of it.

"I had a…difficult shift", she replies.

She looks at her hands in her lap. She has her blanket over the half down of her body and a huge hoodie from her college that was twice her size and that probably will look better on him than does on her.

"A patient came from an accident very ill, it was a pregnant woman, we tried to save her and the baby, but we ended losing both", she isn't sure why she is telling him this. But she is and she doesn't care if he mocks her for sounding weak and sentimental about it. "She remind me of Shauna. My friend which you talked to the night I got drunk. She is expecting a baby girl and... when I saw that woman all bloody, pleading me to save her baby I just…", Tris swallowed while her vision started to get blurry. "Sorry", she says and tries to hide her face in her hands before she can cry, but Eric puts a hand in one of her shoulders and squeezes.

Eric doesn't say anything, he just stays there, in silence. Maybe because he is bad at making feel people better or maybe because he pities her. Tris doesn't know and doesn't want to; she just knows that having him close makes her feel a little bit better; reminds her that she is not alone.

Tris passes her hands over her face and hair and when she looks at him again, his eyes are soft and she is crying fully, in front of him. Somehow, they know what the other is thinking, because the next thing Tris knows is that she is leaning forward, and he is wrapping his arms around her.

They share a hug, but this time Tris is sober, and Eric is hugging her back.

* * *

"You still want to go to the supermarket?", he asks, when she gets out of the bathroom. She bathed again after she stopped crying and told him that she wanted to go to the supermarket.

"Yeah", she answers and Eric nods. He was leaning from the wall next to the door with his things in hand.

Tris goes to her room and is looking for a shirt to wear when she remembers that Eric told her a while ago that he was going to take her to buy clothes when they went to the supermarket again. Back then she thought it was a bad idea, but now that she sees her closet and how horrible it is, she decides that maybe is a good idea. And since even Lynn liked the clothes Eric choose for her, she decides that maybe shopping for clothes with him will not be that bad.

Tris ends up choosing a grey shirt that has the name of the city and some baggy jeans with her old black and white Converse.

When she is ready, she takes the black leather jacket that she used that night she got drunk and then took her purse with her things. She sat down on the couch to wait up for Eric.

While she did that, she noticed a book on the coffee table and curiosity took the best of her. The only books Tris had were the ones she used in the college and one other than another novel she read when she was a teen, but she didn't recognize the one on the coffee table sit beside Eric's phone. Then she remembered that Eric liked to read, or at least that said the shelves he had in his room.

When she first met Eric, she didn't think that he was the type to read. Tris thought that he was more of an asshole who worried about himself and the calories in his food more than other people. But then he passed the detective test and became the youngest detective in ages from the CPD and she understood that his muscles and tattoos couldn't do it all.

Tris discovered his book collection once she entered his room to complain about something and then saw at least three shelves full of books. It was quite a surprise and he got angry at her for discovering it since he yelled at her to get out, but since then, she has caught him reading more than once. Well, at least when he isn't punching the balcony bag, complaining about the calories in the food, and getting hurt in his job.

She takes the book in her hands and reads the title. The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes. She can't stop a chuckle from escaping her, since it was a very detective of him to read something like that. She leaves it on the coffee table again and then goes to the kitchen to get something to eat before leaving since she doesn't remember the last time, she ate something.

A few minutes later, she is still in the kitchen, when she hears her name.

"Tris!", she stops what she is doing and rolls her eyes. She doesn't get why he must yell her name, but he has always done that. She guesses it means that they are back to normal, something that she thinks because she feels ashamed of crying in front of him.

"What?!", she yells back, starting to wash her hands again in the sink.

A few seconds later, Eric appears in the kitchen wearing the usual, except that this time he has black and white Vans and he is wearing a Van Halen shirt that leaves his neck and arms tattoos at sight. But his piercings and ripped jeans are still the same.

"I kind of need some help with this shit", he explains and when Tris turns around to look at him, he is struggling with the bandage of his wound.

Tris dries her hands and then turns to help him. They are relatively close, enough for Tris to smell his too good to be true smell. Before the faking thing, she always thought that his smell meant bad things, but after the hug, they shared a while ago, she is finding it a new meaning.

"Your stitches look fine", she informs, not that he asked, but she supposes is a thing she does.

"That means I don't need to use that shit?", she looks at him with a stern glare, the one's mothers give children when they do something they don't like.

"Stop saying bad words", Tris starts wrapping his arm with the bandage anyway and Eric rolls his eyes.

"Okay mom", he tries to imitate a childish voice, but it came out too whiny.

Tris ends the wrapping in a few seconds since feels natural to do it at this stage of her life.

"Ready to go?", he asks, and she nods.

A couple of minutes later, they are in the car.

* * *

"I think we should go to the mall first and then the supermarket", she casually comments, while AC/DC is blasting through the speakers again, but this time not so loud.

Eric looks at her for a few seconds until he must look ahead to not cause an accident. He shouldn't be driving but Eric is an expert in doing whatever he wants. At least he is taking the medicine for his wound.

"Did I hear wrong or you are going to take my advice of changing those rags?", there is a smirk on his lips when Tris looks at him, so she rolls her eyes and crosses her arms over her chest.

"They aren't rags, but I think I need to update my closet, yes".

"Update like a decade or two, I'll say".

"It's not like you are a fashion designer or something".

"No but I have a younger sister and I know how to deal with it".

Tris doesn't know what to think after that revelation. She suspected that he had a younger sibling but didn't expect a sister. But, again, he was right. That kind of explains why he was so good at combining things.

"And also, a niece", he adds, and he is smiling like he is proud of that simple fact. "So, I know what I'm doing".

For once, Tris decides to believe him.

"Okay".

* * *

To Tris' surprise, shopping for clothes is not as bad as grocery shopping. Or at least at the beginning. When they arrived at the mall, it wasn't that crowded since it was a weekday and a couple of stores were open.

"So, do you prefer a store in specific, or I have to choose for you?", he asks.

"Well, I don't have a favorite one, I buy what I like or makes me feel good", she confesses. Tris feels the situation is kind of surreal since she never imagines herself walking in the mall with Eric. She usually did that activity with the girls, when they had time, of course.

"Okay, maybe we need to change that rule a little bit", and Eric takes her to a random store.

A couple of minutes and a few stores later, Tris was getting frustrated. They were the typical case of 'I don't like that' and 'that is too expensive' or 'I'm not going to wear that' and 'that's the ugliest shit I have ever seen. If Eric liked something, Tris finds it too short or stretch or revealing, and if Tris liked something, Eric complained because it was too long, ugly, or made her look fat. They even started an argument in a store and the employee asked them to leave because they were making a scene. Eric didn't care, but Tris was red from embarrassment.

That is until Eric sees something in a store and he drags her there.

"Look at this", he says and before Tris can stop him, Eric is showing her a cute nice black dress that isn't too revealing.

"Black? Seriously?", Eric rolls his eyes.

"C'mon kitten. I'm getting tired", he puts the dress back and gets another one that is in another color. "What about this one?"

Tris was about to answer when someone else spoke to them.

"Tris?", she turns her head almost immediately to find Al, one of their neighbors. She smiled a little and he smiled back. "Fancy meeting you here", she crosses her arms and chuckles nervously.

"Well, we just came for a few things. How are you? Haven't seen you in this past week".

"I'm alright. I have been doing a lot of work these past days, I'm here just accompanying my mother", he points behind him in the general direction. Tris nods, suddenly remembering that Al still lived with his parents.

Al looks at Eric now beside her before looking at Tris again.

"Can I talk to you for a second?", he asks, and Tris is about to say yes when she suddenly feels a big muscled arm around her waist. Tris stops what she was going to say and stiffens a little.

"We are in a hurry, so whatever you can say you can say in front of her boyfriend", Eric gives him a big grin, one of those he gives when he feels he won in something. Tris suddenly has a bad feeling about the situation.

Al looks at them with wide eyes and Tris feels bad for him for a second, even though, Eric wasn't supposed to be that rude. And the lie was just for family and friends, and Al was simply a neighbor.

"Boyfriend? Are you together for real? I thought it was the only gossip", he even looks hurt and Tris has to swallow the guilt. She likes Al, but just as the neighbor who is always friendly.

"Well, is not just gossip. We are together", Eric answers and Tris feels how he pushes her to his chest in a side hug. "Right kitten?", Eric looks down at her before kissing her on the head. She smiles.

"Yeah".

"Oh", is what Al says. Tris wants to give him an apologetic smile, but he is looking at the floor like he is a little ashamed. "Well, my congrats", Al smiles at them, even though his voice is not that happy.

"You can tell her whatever you wanted to tell her, thought", Eric smirks again, almost like he knows that Al is not going to tell him anything because he is now intimidated.

"Oh, no. No worries weren't important anyway", he smiles again, but this time sadly. "I'll see you later", and with that Al turns around and disappears at the other side of the store.

"What the hell was that?", Tris says, getting Eric's arm off her and looking at him with an annoyed face.

"What? I was just doing my fake job", he lifts his shoulders, like he doesn't have the slightest idea of what he did wrong. He even moves to other clothes.

"You didn't have to be that rude. He only wanted to tell me something", she says, following him with arms crossed and a frown on her face.

Eric stops to turn around. Tris is smaller than him, so he must look down.

"He was going to ask you out", he says in almost a whisper and Tris can see something on his face. Something else.

"And? We can go out like friends".

"Well, that will bring a lot of gossips since we are 'something'", he makes the comas with his hands. For some reason, Eric looks annoyed. "And even if we are faking this, we need to take care of details".

Eric turns around again and approaches a few shirts and skirts. Tris arrives fast to his side.

"Are you jealous?", she doesn't know why she asks, but that is the impression the blond gives her.

In response, Eric laughs.

"Why on Earth will I be jealous? We are faking. I don't feel anything for you", he is looking at her right into her eyes and his tone is kind of aggressive, almost defensive. "You're not even my type".

The words, to Tris' surprise, hurt a little and she doesn't know why. It was obvious that Eric didn't felt anything for her, and he wasn't going to because he didn't like her at all. Then why the hell it hurtled that he said that he didn't feel anything for her?

"Okay", she says, trying to not let him see that she is a little hurt by his words. "Then stop being a jackass", this time she is the one to turn around.

"Jackass? I'm not being a jackass. He is the jackass", he explains, following her closely. Tris suddenly stops in front of a blue and grey blouse. "I have been living with you enough to know that that dude has been eyeing you the wrong way. Since day one", she turns with the blouse in hand and looks at him with a stern face and her free hand in her hip.

"Why do you care if he looks at me in the wrong way or not? Is my problem, not yours", Eric runs one of his hands through his hair, just like he does when he is trying hard to not lose his patience.

"Because you live with me and I don't want problems", he explains, but something in his explanation sounds like bullshit. "Look, this faking shit was your idea, but you need to keep up with it the right way. And going out with Al can bring trouble".

"I think that you are just judging him because he still lives with his parents and doesn't have an important job as yours".

"What? Why will…", Eric gets out a tired sigh and Tris turns around to get other pieces of clothing she finds appealing.

They don't talk anymore after that, but Eric follows her around the place while she chooses new clothing. He doesn't even dare to comment on them. In the end, before she buys them, she decides to try them on in the dressing rooms. While Tris was at it, Eric had to stay outside, with her purse on a shoulder and her leather jacket over the other. It was a funny sight since he was way too big and manly to carry one.

Tris tried first a couple of shirts and blouses she got but that she didn't let Eric see. Neither the skinny jeans nor the blue skirt she got, but she felt proud of herself for choosing different and looking quite good with them.

It wasn't until she had to try on the dresses that she started doubting a little. One of the dresses wasn't her style, but she chose it to only try something different. Now that she was with it, she thought that maybe she needed a second opinion on it. And her only opinion was Eric.

Tris sighs tiredly and tries not to blush. It impossible, but she decides to do it anyway since she wasn't a coward and didn't exactly care what he could say. (Spoiler alert: that's a total lie).

Tris takes a deep breath before going out of the dressing room. For her luck, it was just Eric talking on the phone in the waiting area. He wasn't truly paying attention until she spoke.

"I need a second opinion with this one", Eric turns his head around, and when his grey eyes land in her, he kind of stops talking for a few seconds.

He stares at her from head to toes with something weird in his eyes, something that she couldn't place, something she has never seeing in his eyes before. For a few seconds, it felt weird, but then it makes her feel uncomfortable, so she looked at herself to see if there was something bad in the dress. Before she could ask, Eric spoke.

"It looks…great", he says and when their eyes meet, he is not talking on the phone anymore. He is looking at her with soft eyes, but with eyes that still have that thing, Tris can't name. "Ah, your brother called, I answered your phone", he says, and Tris is about to scold him, but he offers the phone back to her when she walks to him.

Eric stays sat while Tris takes her phone to her ear. He tries not to look at her exposed legs nor how good that dress looked in her.

"Oh, hi, Caleb", she says, and he sees her smile. "Yeah, sorry, we are currently in the mall, buying some stuff", Eric looks to the floor and finds her unpaired socks. "Dinner?", Eric looks at her face again, to find that she is looking at her already with an alarmed expression. "Okay, but you just talked to him and I told you he is going to your wedding", she giggles, putting her free hand in her hip. They are still staring at each other. "Okay, let me ask him", Tris hides her phone in her right side of her chest. "What day you're free?"

"Ahhhh", he says after thinking for a couple of seconds.

Tris rolls her eyes and groans before returning the phone to her ear. While she talks, he doesn't look at her again, and Tris decides to look somewhere else too.

"Okay, great. Send me the address and we will be there. Me too. Bye", she hangs up the call and then sighs relieved. "My brother can be such a pain in the ass", Eric smirks, now looking at her. "He and Peter want us to dine with them at their new house. The excuse is that they want to meet my boyfriend, but he probably just wants to show off his new house".

"I thought they were going to wait for the wedding to meet me".

"That was supposed to be the plan, but I suppose that they ran out of patience since they are the only ones beside Will who hasn't meet you yet", Tris puts her phone in the purse he has in his arm and takes a few steps back. "So, the dress, what do you think?"

Eric swallows, or at least, that's what Tris thinks he does.

"I think it looks good, but that's not your style".

"Yeah, true, but in my defense, I was mad with you when I thought it was a good idea", Eric rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest.

"Okay. You can wear whatever the hell you like anyway".

"So that's a yes?"

"Yeah", Tris smiles and returns to the dressing room. Somehow, she was smiling more than necessary.

Tris buys her stuff a while later, they go to the supermarket and then back home, where she cooks, and they eat in an awkward silence that both hate.


End file.
